A group of us are in the process of putting the finishing touches on a Christmas-sharing project whereby we collect gifts for battered mothers and their children and donate them to a local women's center.  This center provides them to the mother who wraps the gifts and presents them to her children on Christmas Day.  We never meet the mothers or their children.  For their security and safety, their identities are obscured from us.

As we work through the logistics of organizing our piece of the drive again this year, I am struck by the phenomenal generosity of people even in these alleged times of "gloom, doom and despair".  The number of families and individuals that we will touch this year is triple that of last year's result.

Maybe this "giving to a good cause" is a simple manifestation of generosity. 

Maybe.

I think it is more than that.

I think it is love - pure, unadulterated, unselfish, no-strings-attached love. 

It is love for a fellow human being who has been through the wringer of life and needs a little help.

It is love for someone who is down on their luck and needs a helping hand to get back on their feet. 

It is love for someone who needs to know that someone out there cares for them. 

It is love for a child that we may never meet, who will grow up and express their love in their generosity to others.

It is love that, once planted, nurtured and growing in someone who needs it, will ultimately be passed on to someone else at some point.

My oldest son said something today that ordinarily would have been shrugged off as a funny comment but today had some poignancy to it.

He said that my ability and strong desire to navigate through humanity and network like crazy creeps him out.  After all, my LinkedIn network alone has 11 million people in it.  I laughed and said that it was my job to network with people, to increase the potential for success in the different projects that I am engaged in.

In thinking about this later and feeling overwhelmed with gratitude to all the wonderful people engaged in our projects (and for all the people engaged in similar projects), I got to thinking.

Maybe I justify being a consummate networker (I am called "the Link" in New York City) by saying I need to network in order to maximize the potential for success in my projects.

Maybe, just maybe, I am a consummate networker because it provides me with the honor and privilege of connecting with wonderful, generous, unselfish people in the world, giving them another outlet to express their gratitude and their love for others.

Maybe.

I do know this.  I have a reputation in New York City as being "the tough guy who gets stuff done with singular, maniacal focus".  So if my real purpose is to network so that we can create more opportunities for sharing and expressing our love for others, then we will have to keep my real purpose a secret. 

Just between you and I.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry