“If you light a lamp for someone, it will also brighten your own path.”

— Buddha (Siddhārtha Gautama, c. 563–483 BCE). One of history’s most influential spiritual teachers.

Lost once again. The map was blurred, the faces were turned away, and even my voice felt foreign in my own mouth. I asked for help—and the world, polite but indifferent, kept walking past me.

Then, from the corner of the dream, they came: a quiet order of nuns, habits brushing against the air like whispered prayers. They didn’t question, didn’t doubt, didn’t ask why I’d lost my way. They simply pointed, walked beside me, and led me back—not home, but to shelter.

The next day, in a hall filled with strangers, I stood and wept. A litany rose unbidden from somewhere deep inside my soul:

“You, when others wouldn’t.
You who stopped.
You who listened.
You who saw.
You who guided.”

Even in dreams, grace has its own coordinates. It finds the weary traveler and teaches him again how to say thank you.

If we can rise to that level of grace in our dreams, surely, we can do the same in our waking worlds, not only as we approach tomorrow’s Giving Tuesday but also for the days and dreams following.

I’m always moved by Giving Tuesday, but here’s what touches me most about all giving on any day. It’s rarely the grand gesture that changes a life. It’s the small one. The held door. The unexpected kindness. The “you, when others wouldn’t.”

History is full of moments when the world pivoted because someone chose to act quietly.

A schoolteacher once told a shy seamstress she had worth. Rosa Parks carried that worth onto a bus—and stayed seated. One small affirmation. One historic refusal to rise.

A girl in a noisy cafeteria slid her tray beside the classmate no one chose. Temple Grandin steadied. And the world gained a scientist who would reshape our understanding of animal behavior with a mind sharpened by that single act of belonging.

A janitor, keys jangling at his side, unlocked a door he technically wasn’t supposed to open. Katherine Johnson stepped through that doorway and, years later, calculated trajectories that sent astronauts safely around the earth and back again. A quiet gesture. A giant leap.

A grieving orphan found milk bottles on her doorstep each morning—paid for by a neighbor who refused to let her go without. Eleanor Roosevelt drank that kindness into her bones and later poured it back into a nation hungry for courage and compassion.

A librarian in rural Arkansas bent one small rule and whispered, “Take as many as you can carry.” Maya Angelou carried the world home in her arms. One book. One voice saved.

A neighbor left warm pies on the porch of a lonely, sick boy. Fred Rogers tasted gentleness—and spent his life serving that same gentleness back to millions.

And once, in a coal camp tucked into the hills of West Virginia, there was a boy with more dreams than dollars. Family scraped together what they could. Hometown folks established a scholarship for books. And a benefactor he never met—a woman with a soft spot for sons of coal miners—left a scholarship in her will. A small legacy. A single key. It opened the doors of Alderson–Broaddus, and he walked through. One quiet kindness at a time, my whole life unfolded.

Giving Tuesday began the same way—a small act against a noisy world.

In 2012, while Black Friday and Cyber Monday shouted for our wallets, one community center in New York whispered a different idea: What if we set aside a day to give instead of grab? No marching band. No corporate roar. Just a fragile invitation to generosity.

From that whisper came a wave.

By 2013, national organizations amplified the call, and tiny local charities set $1,000 goals for school supplies—and met them.

By 2017, corporations began matching donations in the millions, while families sent $10 to local food pantries so children could eat over the weekend.

In 2020, during the hardest months of the pandemic, Giving Tuesday saw its greatest surge—global giving and neighborhood kindness flowing side by side, from billion-dollar pledges to collected change for an elderly couple’s grocery delivery.

By 2023, U.S. donors gave over $3.1 billion, even as small wildlife refuges and shelters used single matching gifts to exceed their modest goals.

And 2024 reached new heights: an estimated $3.6 billion donated nationwide. But alongside those vast totals was a tiny nonprofit raising just over $5,000 from 37 supporters—enough to keep its doors open one more year.

Big gestures.
Small gestures.
All pointing the way.

The nuns in my dream offered direction, compassion, a hand on my elbow saying, “This way.” They changed everything by simply choosing to care. The nuns in my dream led me to shelter.

This Giving Tuesday, maybe we can do the same—for someone still searching for the way back.