If it is you, would you willing to give up?
It all began with a stop at a red light.
Kevin Salwen, a writer and entrepreneur in Atlanta, was driving his 14-year-old daughter, Hannah, back from a sleepover in 2006. While waiting at a traffic light, they saw a black Mercedes coupe on one side and a homeless man begging for food on the other.
“Dad, if that man had a less nice car, that man there could have a meal,” Hannah protested. The light changed and they drove on, but Hannah was too young to be reasonable. She pestered her parents about inequity, insisting that she wanted to do something.
“What do you want to do?” her mom responded. “Sell our house?”
Warning! Never suggest a grand gesture to an idealistic teenager. Hannah seized upon the idea of selling the luxurious family home and donating half the proceeds to charity, while using the other half to buy a more modest replacement home.
Eventually, that’s what the family did. The project — crazy, impetuous and utterly inspiring — is chronicled in a book by father and daughter scheduled to be published next month: “The Power of Half.” It’s a book that, frankly, I’d be nervous about leaving around where my own teenage kids might find it. An impressionable child reads this, and the next thing you know your whole family is out on the street.
At a time of enormous needs in Haiti and elsewhere, when so many Americans are trying to help Haitians by sending everything from text messages to shoes, the Salwens offer an example of a family that came together to make a difference — for themselves as much as the people they were trying to help. In a column a week ago, I described neurological evidence from brain scans that altruism lights up parts of the brain normally associated with more primal gratifications such as food and sex. The Salwens’ experience confirms the selfish pleasures of selflessness.
Mr. Salwen and his wife, Joan, had always assumed that their kids would be better off in a bigger house. But after they downsized, there was much less space to retreat to, so the family members spent more time around each other. A smaller house unexpectedly turned out to be a more family-friendly house.
“We essentially traded stuff for togetherness and connectedness,” Mr. Salwen told me, adding, “I can’t figure out why everybody wouldn’t want that deal.”
One reason for that togetherness was the complex process of deciding how to spend the money. The Salwens researched causes and charities, finally settling on the Hunger Project, a New York City-based international development organization that has a good record of tackling global poverty.
The Salwens pledged $800,000 to sponsor health, microfinancing, food and other programs for about 40 villages in Ghana. They traveled to Ghana with a Hunger Project executive, John Coonrod, who is an inspiration in his own right. Over the years, he and his wife donated so much back from their modest aid-worker salaries that they were among the top Hunger Project donors in New York.
The Salwens’ initiative hasn’t gone entirely smoothly. Hannah promptly won over her parents, but her younger brother, Joe, was (reassuringly) a red-blooded American boy to whom it wasn’t intuitively obvious that life would improve by moving into a smaller house and giving money to poor people. Outvoted and outmaneuvered, Joe gamely went along.
The Salwens also are troubled that some people are reacting negatively to their project, seeing them as sanctimonious showoffs. Or that people are protesting giving to Ghana when there are so many needy Americans.
Still, they have inspired some converts. The people who sold the Salwens their new home were so impressed that they committed $100,000 to the project. And one of Hannah’s closest friends, Blaise, pledged half of her baby-sitting savings to an environmental charity.
In writing the book, the Salwens say, the aim wasn’t actually to get people to sell their houses. They realize that few people are quite that nutty. Rather, the aim was to encourage people to step off the treadmill of accumulation, to define themselves by what they give as well as by what they possess.
“No one expects anyone to sell a house,” said Hannah, now a high school junior who hopes to become a nurse. “That’s kind of a ridiculous thing to do. For us, the house was just something we could live without. It was too big for us. Everyone has too much of something, whether it’s time, talent or treasure. Everyone does have their own half, you just have to find it.”
翻譯:
如果是你,你愿意放棄什么?
故事開始于一個十字路口，路口亮著紅燈。
凱文·薩文是美國亞特蘭大市的一個作家兼企業家。2006年的一天，他載著自己14歲的女兒漢娜從別的地方回家。在等待信號燈變綠的時候，他們看到馬路上停著一輛黑色奔馳車，而在奔馳車不遠處的馬路另一側，一個無家可歸的流浪漢在乞討食物。
“老爸，如果那個車主買一輛不那么昂貴的車，那個流浪漢就可以吃一頓飽餐了！”漢娜不滿的說道。紅燈變綠了，他們繼續上路，但小漢娜還是不懂事的纏著父母，她覺得這件事很不公平，并堅持要為那個可憐的人做些什么。
“那你想做什么呢？”她媽媽打趣地問她。“你想要把我們的房子賣了嗎？”
（提醒：不要給一個理想主義的孩子這么大方的提議！漢娜就咬定了這個主意，她執意要把家里豪華的別墅賣掉，把賣房所得一半的錢捐給慈善基金會，然后還有一半的錢則用來買一棟相對一般的房子作新家。）
最后，家里拗不過她的軟磨硬泡，真的就把房子給賣了。在下個月即將出版的新書《一半的力量》中，父親和女兒作為作者，將這個瘋狂、沖動但卻相當發人深省的計劃公之于眾。老實說，這本書我可不敢隨便放在我自家孩子觸手可及的地方。孩子都很容易受影響和啟發，如果他們讀了，說不定哪天你們全家就不得不搬到大街上去住了。
在這個海地等世界其他地方亟需幫助的時候，許許多多的美國人都在以不同的方式幫助他們，有的發去慰問短信，有的則捐衣捐物。但薩文一家卻給我們樹立了一個別樣的榜樣，他們齊心協力，為他們自己，也為那些需要幫助的人們真正做了富有意義的事。在一周前我的另一篇專欄文章中，我說過，大腦掃描的結果顯示：無私的行為會使大腦部分感受到如食物和性生活般最為原始的快感。薩文家的經歷正是無私帶來自私快感的一大例證。
薩文先生和他的妻子喬安先前總是認為在大房子里，孩子們會過的更加愜意。但是在搬進小房子后，將大家隔離開來的空間少得多了，這樣一來，家庭成員就可以有更多的時間呆在一起。小房子出乎意料地變成了一個更加適宜家庭生活的家。
“其實我們是把物質和金錢轉換成更加緊密無間的聯系了，”薩文先生在與我談話中這樣說道，“我覺得如果有這種選擇，每個人都會像我一樣這么做的。”
要決定如何合理利用另一半的錢也是一個復雜的過程，薩文一家花時間研究了一些機構和慈善團體，最終決定將錢捐給“戰勝饑餓項目”。這是一個設在紐約的國際發展組織，因其努力解決貧困問題而享譽全球。
薩文一家共給該機構捐獻了80萬美元，共資助了加納40個村莊，涉及項目包括健康、小額融資、食物等等。他們專程前往加納，與他們同行的還有“戰勝饑餓項目”執行官約翰·庫羅，他憑借自身的能力，吸引了許多人加入了慈善行業。多年來，作為救援人員，他和夫人用盡了自己綿薄的工資捐助他人，在整個紐約的“戰勝饑餓項目”名錄上無疑最為耀眼。
薩文一家的行動其實也不是一帆風順的。漢娜說服了父母，但她的弟弟喬伊是一個血氣方剛的美國男孩，他始終不相信自己搬進小房子、把大把鈔票送給窮人會改善生活。最后通過家庭民主投票，以及父母姐姐的一番勸說，喬伊也只好硬著頭皮與家人站在了同一戰線上。
薩文一家當然也有別的、來自外界的煩惱。有些人對于他們的計劃不以為然，認為他們只是在偽善地作秀。還有些人則抗議他們將財產資助給加納，而不是同樣有許多窮人的美國本土。
盡管反對聲音并不少，但他們還是啟示了很多人。將小房子賣給薩文一家的房東被他們的行為所感染，于是也慷慨的捐了10萬美元給這個項目。而漢娜最好的朋友布萊斯則將她打工當保姆所賺的錢一半捐給了一個環境保護機構。
薩文父女說，寫這本書的目的不是真的要我們都去賣房子，他們知道很少有人像他們那么瘋狂。書的出版旨在勸誡人們不要永無止盡地積累財富，鼓勵人們以一種新的方式給自己定位，不光要看你有什么，還要看你給別人什么。
漢娜現在已經步入高中并夢想著當一名護士，她說：“沒人會求別人去賣房子，這種事情太過荒唐。對我們來說，大房子只是我們生活中可以放棄的一樣東西，我們沒有必要擁有那么多空間。我覺得每個人都會有些東西富余，不管是時間、天賦還是財富。每個人都可以找到自己可以放棄的那一半，只要耐心尋找，就一定能找到。”
