If you want to give, if you want to donate to this, you will certainly help us.

But at the end of the day, I will promise you.

I will give you your money back if it doesn't happen.

But you will be helped more than the people that you're helping.

And I believe that with every bone in my, every pore in my body.

Hi, I'm Jeff Krasno and welcome to Commune, where every week we explore the ideas, values, and practices that bring us together and help us live healthy and purpose-filled lives.

Okay. Most of us think of charity as giving either money or time to those less fortunate. But originally Charity had a much broader meaning.

Charity has its roots in the word caritas,

which was the Latin translation for the Greek concept, Agape, or unconditional love of others.

The word philanthropy, which first appeared in 500 BC in Escalis's Prometheus bound,

literally means love of man. Now, Western culture has evolved around this spiritual ethos that thou

shall love thy neighbor as thyself. And from this core belief, we have institutionalized

giving back, creating thousands of non-profit organizations and tax incentives for personal

giving and corporate giving. On a societal level,

we believe we have an obligation to others, as President Obama often said, to dull the sharper

edges of capitalism. And this has shaped our modern understanding of the word and the concept

charity. However, beyond the desire to help others, there may be another reason

that we are drawn to giving. Gandhi said, the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the

service of others. On a very basic human level, the greater connection we feel to those around us, the happier we seem to be.

So to answer this question, why we give, I went out and spoke with some people who devoted their lives to giving back.

I started with Ron Kaplan.

Ron is a successful music agent. He's the founder of Monterey International, a music booking agency, which has now joined the Paradigm Agency.

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