Looking For A Last Minute Way To Give This Season?

Then please consider this. I've done an awful lot of volunteering this year in the hope that the efforts would give me one of those "A-ha!" moments. I've worked with children, the elderly, the homless, and the incarcerated. I planned to base a book on these experiences until I came to the realization that my thesis statement was "I suspect we'd all be happier if I just wrote you a check." Somehow that doesn't seem so uplifting. Yet these experiences have changed my relationship with giving and now I'm always looking for ways I can help. I traveled to Hawaii when I was seventeen and all I've wanted to do since then was go back. So I've spent my entire professional life hoarding my American Airlines advantage miles, resisting the temptation to cash them in for a lesser trip and always buying extra miles when I had the chance. Eleven years after beginning to bank my miles and many extra dollars spent, I finally had enough for two first-class, round-trip tickets to Hawaii. Or Europe. Or wherever else in the world I might like to travel. Then I read about Operation Hero and I realized I also had enough miles to send an entire family to visit their loved one who'd been injured in Iraq or Afghanistan. My AAdvantage balance is back to zero now and for the first time I understand exactly what it feels like to give until it hurts. A-ha.