The Importance of Generosity in an Age of Angst

Democracy and doing good business both depend on it

Feeling sort of uncertain as we move into the final months of 2025? Anxious about the state of the world that, like it or not, we are living in? Trying to figure out how to lead with dignity when the greater ecosystem around us seems stuck in darkness and the ascent of autocracy? World affairs going awry, millions of people about to go hungry, thousands getting killed in conflicts around the world… I struggle with what to do about all these things pretty much every day. Add to that the far more mundane issues involved in helping lead the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses (ZCoB)—costs going up, coolers going down. As you likely know by now, based on what I wrote last week, I find a way to keep going anyway. Small steps can feel insignificant, but they add up to make a big, big difference.

While there is not a lot that I can do to get things into shape at a national level, I can and do focus my energies on doing the right thing right here at home. Every morning, when I do my daily journaling, I remind myself to practice Richard Rohr’s belief that “the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.” Trying to make our workplaces more delicious and more democratic at the same time. Pushing against the national trend of corporate consolidation by spreading ownership amongst our staff ever more widely (over 300 ZCoBbers now own a Community Share). Working to advance the idea that apricots are an amazing and inspiring symbol of dignity and democracy.

This week, my call to action—to myself and maybe to you, too—is to lean into the spirit of generosity. Any time you find yourself in even the smallest bit of doubt about what to do, default, wherever it’s possible, to acting with generosity.

I know that generosity is not a quick fix, nor an overnight national panacea. But in the spirit of small steps, seemingly tiny acts of generosity do add up. In an era in which cruelty has come to dominate the headlines, the spirit of generosity becomes, quietly but compellingly, all the more significant. Small shifts toward taking a generous stance in the world are examples of the kind of caring and nonviolent practices that I wrote about a few weeks ago. As I pointed out then, we can practice nonviolence in both the workplace and the world around us. Generous individuals create generous organizations, which in turn contribute to increasingly generous communities, which, over time, come together to create countries in which the spirit of generosity is valued far more than power grabs, IPOs, and the like.

To be clear, I’m not talking about donating more money per se, though for those of us who can, that also makes sense. This is about spirit, something that is essentially free, but can, when used well in the long run, help us all to secure our freedom and grace and dignity. As Yi-Fu Tuan, the Chinese-born American author and geographer, observed, “A spontaneous act of generosity, performed with unselfish grace is an example of moral beauty.” And moral beauty is, without question, something we could sure use more of right now.

I’m not suggesting that it’s easy to stay focused on acts of generosity in the face of issues that seem far bigger. There are, of course, difficult days, days when withdrawing from the world feels like the most desirable option. After all, apathy often appears easier than active engagement. I know, though, that apathy is not a very good answer. Looking away from what’s wrong for long periods of time has never, in my many decades of leadership, served me well. Constructively communicating our visions, values, beliefs, and anxieties is a good way to practice the spirit of generosity by sharing our own spirit with those around us.

If I doubt all that, I can turn to the words of the inspiring and insightful writer Elif Shafak. Shafak—born in France, raised in Turkey, and now living in London—spent a year here in Ann Arbor teaching at the University of Michigan (U of M) from 2003 to 2004. I remember meeting her once on the patio at the Deli. She is a remarkable writer and one of the most courageous people I’ve come into contact with. In a conversation on the World Economic Forum podcast a couple of years back, she described a struggle I experience almost every day now: Is it better to speak up or tune out? Say something or hope we can survive by sitting on the sidelines in seeming “safety?” Here’s a bit of her very clear call to action:

I think as writers coming from wounded countries or wounded democracies … we don’t have the luxury of being apolitical. We don’t have the luxury of saying … I don’t want to talk about what’s happening outside the window. … When so much is happening outside the window, you need to speak out and speak out.

Anne Applebaum, an author and a historian of Central and Eastern Europe, has certainly practiced what Shafak is suggesting. She writes and speaks regularly about the dangers of autocracy, sharing significant historical lessons we can all learn from. Applebaum has an excellent and impactful, if also serious and sort of scary, essay in the new issue of the Atlantic. Entitled “The Beacon of Democracy Goes Dark,” it offers eerily insightful observations about the state of the greater ecosystem of which all of us living in the U.S. are a part:

The image of the ugly American always competed with the image of the generous American. Now that the latter has disappeared, the only Americans anyone can see are the ones trying to rip you off.

I agree, sadly and somewhat reluctantly, with nearly all of what Applebaum writes. There is, though, one minor exception, a spot where we’re not 100% in alignment. I’m not quite ready to buy the belief that the “generous American” has disappeared. Generous Americans may be endangered, but we are absolutely not extinct.

Trying to revive increasingly hard-to-find traditions is, of course, what we have spent most of the last 44 years doing here at Zingerman’s. Since day one, we have dedicated ourselves to restoring centuries-old, culturally significant, full-flavored foodways that were nearly lost during the emergence of a modern-industrial model that’s much more focused on speed, efficiency, long shelf life, low prices, and consolidation of decision-making power and money. If we have contributed, in some small way, to the revival of artisan cheese and naturally leavened bread, we can certainly do something similar now for the spirit of generosity. Generosity may not be dominating news cycles, but it is still, quietly and effectively, very much alive. Of that I am certain. I live in an ecosystem in which generous-minded folks—coworkers, customers, suppliers, and supporters—are clearly in abundance.

The good news, then, is that we can help bring generosity back to its rightful position of prominence. After all, an organization in which the spirit of generosity is the norm and not an occasional “feel good for five minutes” aberration is almost certainly a more positive ecosystem to be part of. This is true in companies and true in countries. The national issues at hand right now are anxiety-evoking and highly uncomfortable, but they can be overcome. We can begin that work by leaning into the spirit of generosity and learning to live with it front-of-mind. We can do it even when—or especially when—the world around us appears to be going in an opposite, cruel, unusual, and wholly ungenerous direction.

In her most recent enews, British musician Dana Margolin wrote that she started her band Porridge Radio back in 2015 “to understand my own emotions through writing, to allow myself to be vulnerable and to feel and connect with my own experiences.” I didn’t start a band, but I have written a lot of books. For many of the same reasons Dana Margolin details.

While Dana Margolin was just beginning to get her music going in the U.K., I was working on The Power of Beliefs in Business. To Margolin’s point, in the process of doing the research, writing and reflecting, I learned a lot about myself, about business, about people, and about how big a role beliefs play in all aspects of our lives. These are six of my most significant learnings:

• So much of what we do, see, experience, and even taste in our lives is driven by what we believe.
• Our beliefs are all learned.
• If beliefs are learned, they can also be changed. As Elif Shafak learned from her grandmother, “We inherit our circumstances, we improve them for the next generation.”
• If you change a belief, you change the story that emerges from it.
• Negative beliefs lead to negative outcomes; positive beliefs create positive outcomes. And you cannot get positive outcomes from negative beliefs.
• We have the freedom, space, ability, and power to choose our beliefs. To wit, if we base our belief system on a scarcity model and assume that there won’t be enough to go around, then it is logical to conclude that everyone must be out only for themselves. A few people may gain wealth, but in the long run, things will not go well. But we don’t have to choose this kind of belief system. Instead, we can opt to believe in abundance and act accordingly—with generosity.

It will not surprise you, I’m sure, that we lean into the latter here at Zingerman’s. The spirit of generosity is a positive belief, a belief we both embraced and documented in our Statement of Beliefs. It’s the belief that most people want to help other human beings. That sharing is better than taking. That compassion and kindness are far better than cruelty. That if we help and share and collaborate, there will be enough for all. The Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti—Elif Shafak says she has read his 1954 book, The First and Last Freedom, twice—frames the issues at hand in this way:

Beyond all explanations which a good brain can give, why do we choose the worse and not the better, why hate rather than love, why greed and not generosity. … Why?

My answer is that we always have the option to choose. It may not be easy, it may go against the social or organizational grain, it may be uncomfortable or even have significant consequences, but in all those cases and then some, the decision to stick with the spirit of generosity is one we all get to make many times a day.

While the challenges with autocracy in the U.S. are new for many of us, they are anything but for Elif Shafak. She has lived through a lot. Most of her writing life has been spent in service of spreading the word about the drastic downsides of autocracy and the inspiring possibilities of art, human rights, democracy, and diversity. She is all too aware that these are challenging times. In an interview with Prospect magazine a year ago last month, Shafak said:

I think we’re living in the Age of Angst. Everyone is anxious, old and young, east and west; the only difference is that some are better at hiding it than others.

That may sound dark, but as Shafak notes, it is better to be dark and real about the situation than it is to simply disengage. As she puts it, “It would be more troubling if it became the Age of Apathy.” I agree. I’m all about anarchism (and also alliteration), but I have learned over the years the import of having antipathy towards apathy. It can be appealing, but it is never the answer.

So much of what we hope for in life, after all, depends on the spirit of generosity. Everything from democracy in our companies and countries to acts of everyday kindness, to the work we do to lean into collaboration and consensus. Without the spirit of generosity, none of them will work well. The evidence, unfortunately, is all around us. Looking at the headlines over the last few days, millions of Americans who have depended on federal food support systems for years are on the verge of having to live without. Which means that now is a good time to engage with the spirit of generosity more often and with more intensity.

Elif Shafak says that “Undemocratic countries are essentially unhappy countries.” That unhappiness is not without consequence. “If a nation is unhappy,” she adds, “sooner or later it will become unstable.” Shafak doesn’t use the word “generous,” but I will. Ungenerous countries and ungenerous companies are also unhappy places to be a part of. You cannot, I’ve come to believe, have happiness and well-being in a meaningfully healthy and authentic way without an abundance of generosity to “water” the cultural soil. If generosity dries up, democracy dies with it. Empathy evaporates. Dignity is diminished. Inclusion is eliminated. Compassion becomes increasingly hard to find, an activity to be commenced only in private settings, not a part of the publicly celebrated culture. Unhappiness and instability are almost sure to follow.

One American writer answering Elif Shafak’s call to constructive action, it seems, is novelist Marilynne Robinson. Robinson, who will turn 82 towards the end of this month, declared in a recent essay what I have also come to believe: “True Generosity is an Act of Courage.” It is also, she notes, “the noblest of virtues” and “an act of freedom.” Robinson also warns us that “the language of public life has lost the character of generosity.” The work to restore it, Robinson and I agree, belongs to all of us. That work does not begin in Washington. To the contrary, it’s work we can and need to do at every level of our lives. If you’re inspired or even just intrigued, take a two-minute break from reading and go take action right now! Generous countries are created by generous people. Generous companies help create generous communities. And the better each of us is prepared to stay true to the spirit of generosity when we’re under pressure, the better everything around us is going to go.

One little-focused-on element of the spirit of generosity is the work of learning to stay centered when we find ourselves under stress. In the workplace, that can mean practicing caring ways to stay calm even when someone comes at us with surprising strength in the middle of a meeting. We need to learn to meet that moment and be ready to return to generosity, even if at some level we want to lean into revenge. Given recent news reports about war plans, Lesson #18 in Timothy Snyder’s terrific On Tyranny is a bit chilling for me:

Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.

Snyder, of course, is talking about countries. On a far less dramatic scale, I believe the same is true in our organizations. We can all be caught off guard when others around us act in ways we were not ready for. Snyder’s advice remains sound in these far less significant but still important situations. The spirit of generosity can help us avoid reactivity. It reminds us to stay centered, to believe the best about others with whom we are struggling. And, I have come to believe, it’s impossible to build a healthy business without it. Provocative actions will always occur to throw us off our game. Remember: Remain calm. Do not fall for it.

Our future, at work and in the world, may well depend on our ability to do this well. British sociologist Gary Younge says:

It is difficult to imagine building a society that thrives on more sharing, redistribution and collective endeavour without a spirit of generosity—you cannot liberate humanity and dislike the people you are ostensibly doing it with and for at the same time.

How does all this happen here in the ZCoB? Off the cuff, here are just a few of the ways I can count:

• Deciding to start with positive beliefs in job expectations. See our Statement of Beliefs for more on this.
• Practicing our 10-4 Rule (at 10 feet, make eye contact and smile; at 4 feet, greet) amongst ourselves as well as with guests.
• Sharing our organizational frameworks, philosophies, and recipes liberally.
• Teaching everyone who works here how to think and act like a leader. It helps enhance home lives, makes kids likely to be healthier, and makes people who work here far more likely to ask for help when they’re struggling.
• Bringing better food and higher service standards to Ann Arbor. This helps make our community an easier sell to in-demand leaders in a range of fields who are being recruited from bigger cities.
• Sharing our practices with positive leaders on campus. This can make the university a more appealing place to come study or work, which in turn helps us do more business.
• Asking for—and being willing to accept—help all the time!
• Going “the extra mile” with both customers and coworkers. It’s our third step of great service for a reason. It means doing some small but meaningfully positive thing that no one saw coming. Done well, delight will always ensue!
• Creating an internal Community Chest that can be tapped by staff members who are in crisis.

Ignoring the import of generosity will not make it irrelevant. Creative business thinker and author Carol Sanford says that an organization can improve the health of the society around it simply by putting positive values and beliefs into action:

A business’s character—how it behaves, how it maintains integrity, how it lives up to its promises, how it engages with its people and its world, every action it takes no matter how large or small—affects the character of society. Responsible businesses understand and embrace the critical role they play.

The bottom line? Everything goes better when we do it with the spirit of generosity in our hearts and close at hand. Marketing guru Ann Handley, who regularly coaches her clients about effective writing, said this past weekend that “punctuation is a kind of wingman to your words; it helps your words confidently come alive in another’s mind.” I want to suggest that the spirit of generosity (I’m talking authentic spirit, not supposed spirit adopted to trick others into believing) can punctuate our actions more effectively. Done well, it helps one’s work “confidently come alive in another’s mind,” as Handley puts it. When we do what we do with generosity, our impact is almost certainly going to be significantly more positive!

In the face of so many social challenges, and as autocracy is on the rise, I believe one of the best things we can do is practice generosity with ever greater energy and intensity. Generosity works on our brains a bit like tai chi does for our bodies—with diligent practice, you can do it gracefully. It won’t make overt waves in the world, but done consistently well over time, it improves strength, balance, and grace. As Arthur Brooks notes, “Generosity is like the circulation of the blood, healthiest and best when it goes around and around.” The more we practice, the better our metaphorical blood flow will be. Practice won’t make perfect, but it will “make permanent,” Brooks concludes. Sasha Dichter, co-founder of 60 Decibels, adds this about generosity:

I’d argue that being wildly, inappropriately generous has two potential effects, if you’re open to them. The first is short-term, a kind of giddy euphoria that washes over you when you’re generous. That may lead directly to more right action. And the second (drip, drip, drip, over time) is an integration into one’s “code” (whatever it is, and wherever it comes from) of generosity as a core operating principle, an integral part of how we describe ourselves to ourselves. Plus, I like the fact that it’s about action. … The only way I’ve found to really change my behaviors is by actually changing my behaviors.

“Secret #46: The Spirit of Generosity” shares 22 tips on how to live the spirit of generosity in everyday life. Here are a half a dozen that strike me as especially meaningful right now, in the Age of Angst that Elif Shafak says we are in. They are the same things, I will emphasize, that we’d do well to try both at work and in the world around us. If we focus on making the spirit of generosity come alive, I am confident we will succeed. As Dana Margolin observes, “It is interesting to me that what you give your attention to is what has power over you.”

• Choose positive beliefs. Positive beliefs, or what my longtime friend, restaurateur Danny Meyer likes to call “generous assumptions,” are one of the most practical and ultimately most meaningful ways to make the spirit of generosity come alive. There’s a wealth of material on this subject in “Secret #41: Leading with Positive Beliefs.” This is not a vote for false positivity or putting Pollyanna up for president. But it’s important to remember that one can have negative beliefs about a problem (“We’re victims,” “It’s their fault”) or positive ones (“This sucks, but we can do something!”). The negative makes noise but ultimately leads nowhere (or at least nowhere we want to go). The positive framing, by contrast, leads to good long-term outcomes!
• Deal with dignity in every direction. Dignity is, by definition, based on the generous belief that everyone deserves it. As I wrote in “A Revolution of Dignity in the Twenty-First Century Workplace,” dignity is something we can do all day, every day!
• Keep making art. Art makes a difference! Writer Robin Marie MacArthur rightly reminds us that “Authoritarians hate art; art is subversive, truth-telling, unifying, liberatory, spirit-filled. Keep that spirit burning, fiery, alive.
• Make yourself authentically and effectively vulnerable I’m not suggesting we all need to bare all, all the time. But there are ways to share fears, concerns, hopes, and dreams in authentically meaningful ways. I have a feeling we all have anxiety about letting our true selves out into the world. I sure know that I do. Elif Shafak says:In a world that is ever shifting and unpredictable, I’ve come to believe it is totally fine not to feel fine. It is perfectly okay not to be okay. If truth be told, if from time to time you do not catch yourself overwhelmed with worry and indecision, demoralised and exhausted, or even incandescent, maybe you are not really following what is going on—here, there and everywhere.”
• When in doubt, give it out. This is a small practice that I made up for myself when I was working on “Secret #46: The Spirit of Generosity.” It was a way to overcome my tendency to think of a small act of generosity, but then, if I didn’t act quickly, have my conscious brain override the original thought with what seemed like a list of good reasons not to follow through. These are little things—the thought of sending flowers to a friend, writing a thank-you email to a coworker, sending a taste of a new product to a customer’s table, gifting a Bakehouse loaf to a bread-loving guest who hadn’t yet tried that particular variety. All of these, each seemingly minuscule on their own, add up to have a big long-term impact. We can keep the generosity flowing in small ways that are ultimately meaningful!
• Be willing to unlearn. Elif Shafak says that “unlearning is an important part of learning.” With that thought in mind, our collective ecosystem is going to have to unlearn the idea that consolidation of wealth and power is positive and that cruelty is perfectly okay, and start, instead, to lean back into the spirit of generosity. Our organizations can lead the way. I’m confident that we can make that happen: Good things are on the horizon, the spirit of generosity is resilient, and the return to prominence of the generous American, while it may not be right around the corner, is coming.
• Bring generous energy to everything! As my friend Anese Cavanaugh taught me nearly 20 years ago, it’s always a wise move to “set our intent” before we enter a meeting, a conversation, or really an engagement of any sort. I know from experience that if I imagine myself bringing generous energy into whatever encounter I’m about to have, the vibe will, indeed, pass through to other people. Coming into an encounter with the intent of being generous is a quiet yet generous radical act right now. I’ll go with what Sarah Harris from the band Dolly Creamer sings in “The Vibe,” a song on her 2020 debut album, Best of Luck. As you may remember, I wrote a good bit about Sarah last week. Here are the lyrics that come to mind—I’m right there with her:well I am always working on my vibe
  I am not promising it is always high
  but I am promising
  I am always working on my vibe

In the metaphorical organizational ecosystem model, the spirit of generosity is, like the title of Dolly Creamer’s new single, “Like Water.” In the tune, Sarah’s lyrics remind us all that even under great duress, we can all still “be flexible like water.” Things may look grim on any given day and autocrats may be trying to lock us out of decision-making, but as Sarah sings at the end of the song, our small actions add up: “I see great promise as water trickles through the doors.”

In a modern world filled with tall buildings and high-tech innovation, water can seem insignificant to the casual observer—especially here in Michigan, where we have it in abundance. Over time, though, water wears down pretty much any obstacle it comes into contact with. Autocracy builds walls, but the spirit of generosity can, drop by drop, break them down.

In an Age of Angst, generosity will, slowly but surely, get us where we want to go. In that context, I’m reminded of this quote from insightful author Margaret Atwood, who will be on stage with Elif Shafak in London a week from Friday in “Words Like Fire,” a talk about writers and the state of the world:

Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.

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