G

I had heard an amazing story that supported what the Archbishop was
saying. When I met James Doty, he was the founder and director of the
Center of Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford
and the chairman of the Dalai Lama Foundation. Jim also worked as a
full-time neurosurgeon. Years earlier, he had made a fortune as a medical
technology entrepreneur and had pledged stock worth $30 million to
charity. At the time his net worth was over $75 million. However, when
the stock market crashed, he lost everything and discovered that he was
bankrupt. All he had left was the stock that he had pledged to charity. His
lawyers told him that he could get out of his charitable contributions and
that everyone would understand that his circumstances had changed.
“One of the persistent myths in our society,” Jim explained, “is that
money will make you happy. Growing up poor, I thought that money
would give me everything I did not have: control, power, love. When I
finally had all the money I had ever dreamed of, I discovered that it had
not made me happy. And when I lost it all, all of my false friends
disappeared.” Jim decided to go through with his contribution. “At that
moment I realized that the only way that money can bring happiness is to
give it away.”

•           •           •

enerosity is not just about the money we give. It is also about how
we give our time. In the happiness literature there is a great deal of
research on the importance of having a sense of purpose. Purpose,
fundamentally, is about how we are able to contribute and be generous to
others, how we feel needed by and of value to others. A large meta-
analysis by cardiologist Randy Cohen conducted at the Mount Sinai St.
Luke’s Medical Center found that a high sense of purpose correlates with
a 23 percent reduction in death from all causes. In another study
conducted by neuropsychologist Patricia Boyle and her colleagues and
reported in JAMA Psychiatry, people with a sense of purpose were half as
likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease after seven years. It’s no surprise,
then, that being generous with our time seems to be equally profound for