Choosing the opposite is still letting yesterday decide.
I sent my mom $2,000 last month. She called to thank me and I let it go to voicemail.
Not because I was busy. I was sitting on a patio in Lisbon eating a custard tart. I just didn't want to hear her voice crack. Didn't want to feel whatever that call was going to make me feel.
Easier to send the money. Easier to be the son who provides than the son who shows up.
I've been doing this for a while now. Picking up every check at dinner. Buying flights for friends to come visit me. Sending my brothers cash whenever they mention things being tight. Venmo-ing people before they can reach for the bill. I do it fast, like a reflex, and for a long time I told myself it was just who I am. The generous one. The one who made it and gives back.
But that's not what it is.
What it is, is a wall. A really expensive wall that looks like love from the outside and feels like control from the inside. Because when you're always the one giving, you never have to receive anything. And receiving is where the vulnerability lives.
That's the trap. You build enough financial margin to be generous with everyone around you. And the generosity becomes the thing that keeps you at arm's length from all of them. You're the provider. The fixer. The one who handles it. Never the one who needs something. Never the one who picks up the phone and says I'm not doing great, can you just talk to me for a while.
I did this in my logistics days too, but back then I didn't have the money to make it look noble. It was time instead. I'd fix everyone's problems. Help someone move on a Sunday. Drive a buddy to the airport at 4am. Show up for everyone else's emergencies so nobody would notice I never once asked for help with mine.
When I started making real money it just got easier to keep the pattern running. Wire the transfer. Send the gift. Pick up the tab. Feel that little buzz of being the one who can. Then go back to your apartment alone and not call anyone, because calling would mean admitting you need something, and needing something doesn't fit the story.
A woman I was seeing a while back told me something I didn't want to hear. She said I was really good at taking care of people and really bad at letting anyone take care of me. She said it was like dating a vending machine. Put in a request, something comes out. But try to give me something and the slot is closed.
I laughed it off. Because what else do you do when someone sees you that clearly.
She wasn't wrong. I had turned generosity into armor. Every dollar I spent on someone else was a dollar I didn't have to spend being honest about what I actually needed. Which was not to be the guy who sends money. It was to be the guy who picks up the phone.
You know this one. Maybe you bought your parents something expensive instead of having the conversation you've been putting off for three years. Maybe you hired someone to handle a problem a friend offered to help with because accepting help felt like losing ground. Maybe you keep everyone around you grateful and your own walls high and can't figure out why you still feel alone when everyone says you're the most generous person they know.
Generosity that only flows in one direction isn't generosity. It's a transaction. You give, they receive, and the power stays exactly where you need it so you never have to be the smaller one in the room.
I called my mom back three days later. Didn't send money. Just called. She talked about her garden for forty minutes. A new tomato plant that wasn't doing well. The neighbor's dog digging up her yard again. Small, ordinary, pointless stuff that has nothing to do with a wire transfer.
I didn't fix anything. Didn't offer anything. Just sat on a bench in Lisbon and listened to my mom talk about tomatoes.
It scared the shit out of me how hard that was.
The most expensive thing I own isn't what I give away. It's what I won't let anyone give me.
— Best, Jose
