"Be kind to strangers.... because you could be entertaining
God's angels."
My
current project: The Generosity Experiment
Read a
sample (excerpt) from the
book.
My full-time project now
is writing a book about my 14 years testing people's
abilility to be kind especially when I've been kind and
generous to them... despite serious crises in my own life.
I have discovered that the person who
asks
me:
"What can I do to help you?" is rare. Far too many
people
think:
how can I get what I want from Andrea without consideration
for her needs. Everyone who has approached me in that
fashion is fair game to write about.
Generosity of Spirit is a boomerang. What you give out will
come back to you multiplied. Here's an example.
If you will become an early buyer of my book,
The Generosity Experiment,
I will share my profits with up to 2400 of you. (10% to
charity and 43% to be shared amongst you.)
This next phase of
my
Generosity Experiment is to see who will
allow me to park in their driveway or parking lot and sell
me buy a little electricity to keep warm inside my van.
This is a test. So far only 4 people out of thousands have
offered, giving me an actual address. Only one was
serious.
What does this say about us as a society?
Click over to my Driveway Surfing blog to see what
I'm doing and how I'm doing it.
How my 14 Year Generosity Experiment
started
Twenty-some years ago I
met a man at a party in Toronto who had a look in his eyes
of someone who was haunted by the suffering he had seen. I
learned Henry had just returned from Ethiopia where he’d
been helping to reduce famine. It was exhausting work. I
told him I admired him. He said most people hate him. That
startled me. I asked why. “Because,” he said, “people will
envy you for making personal sacrifices to be kind-hearted
to those in need and will treat you with utter contempt.” A
decade or so later I found myself in his shoes.
This article about my Toronto
"Authors Bed &
Breakfast"
appeared in a 1997 supplement to the Canadian
Booksellers Association Trade Show
edition of Quill &
Quire. Here I'm
serving bagels and muffins to a woman (and her unseen
partner) who were visitors from Australia.
My dream was to open a bed
and breakfast for authors on book tours in the heart of
Toronto Canada and combine it with my book promotion
service. I opened on May 1, 1997. On August 20 I
experienced a home invasion and came face to face with the
intruder. That night changed my life for the next thirteen
years.
Because I was able to identify the intruder I helped police
put him in jail. Soon after, the death threats started
because I was freelancing as a broadcaster on national TV.
Police advised me to take the threats seriously so I
quickly closed my B & B and disappeared. The small
community where I sought refuge was hostile despite all my
attempts to make friends, volunteer and do kind things for
my neighbors.
After nearly eight years
of solitude with constant threats and vandalism from my
neighbors I sold my mobile home for half of what I paid for
it and moved again. I wanted to prove that kindness doesn’t
incite envy and contempt everywhere, but as I remained
consistently kind to others, I had to concede that Henry
could have been right. In 2005 I bought a condo unit in a
30 year old building in a small Canadian town near the US
border at a price higher than market value in an effort to
help raise property values for my new neighbors. I was
earning good money again, consulting to US clients by email
and phone.
But it seems my neighbors, most of whom were retired or
living on government assistance, didn’t like my financial
independence and the consistent friendliness and
cheerfulness I showed them. I received anonymous crank
calls, anonymous hate emails, public accusations of things
that I didn’t do, bullying in the halls, banging on my door
at all hours of the day and night, and terrifying physical
threats including a hunting knife at my throat and having a
loaded gun pointed at me. I woke in terror every night. I
cried every day.
Not a single person stood up for me or supported me. I put
my home up for sale, knowing I’d have to take out a loan to
cover the mortgage deficit. Then I received the Cease and
Desist letter. The directors I voted for were telling me I
had to stop earning a living by selling my books from my US
web site and stop consulting to US clients by telephone.
I asked how I was supposed to pay my mortgage and condo
fees every month without income and was told that if I
didn’t pay management would put a lien on my unit so I
couldn’t sell it. If they hated me so much why did they
make it so difficult for me to get away? I was encouraged
by a lawyer to just walk away and leave the country, but
I'm a woman of integrity and couldn't do to someone else
what I wouldn't want someone to do to me.
With no earned income I couldn’t qualify for a loan so I
could offer my home for sale at less than what I still
owed. I felt as if I were on a never-ending episode of The
Twilight Zone. For the 19 months before I sold my condo –
accepting the first offer - I used credit card advances to
keep paying the bills. On May 30, 2008 I was homeless.
Literally. Here I was, someone who once provided
accommodation to strangers, now living in my van with no
money, no job, no income, and nobody who would offer me a
meal or a bed.
I roamed New York,
Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina,
sleeping in parking lots, staying in people’s driveways and
homes where invited in. Most people were hospitable but
most had definite ideas on what I should do… there was a
definite feeling of contempt creeping in to their
conversations as though I didn't deserve to be treated as
an equal. I think there is contempt for the homeless no
matter how it happened. I think I experienced it so that I
could have empathy for those with fewer resources.
After 4 months I learned that my father was falling and
hurting himself and his wife had broken her shoulder so I
drove north to Erie PA and found an affordable apartment so
I could be available to help. I knew I again would have to
put my life on hold for an indefinite period of time -
perhaps years - and I would likely not be able to earn much
if any income due to the unpredictability of my father's
needs.
To pay down my debt load and to avoid more debt, I started
retrieving money from people who had overcharged, underpaid
or never paid me in the past. I found that I could get
better results by helping my debtors save face and look
like heroes rather than using insults, abuse, and bullying
tactics that some bill collectors use.
On December 31, 2009 I started uploading the first pages
of
AndreaReynolds.com the site that was
previously banned. I intend to get back on my feet by
offering to share the profits from the book I'm
writing:
The Generosity Experiment. If I can generate income
from spinoffs like writing articles and speaking, those
profits will be shared with my early buyers as well.
Share my profits | Order the book | Excerpt | News release | Donate
Andrea
Reynolds, Suite 647, 2501 West 12th Street, Erie PA 16505