What is the greatest gift you have given?
I’ve been fortunate enough in my life to give and receive an uncountable number of gifts. This has often put me to think over the tradition and philosophy of gifting itself. Of late, I’ve become a little reluctant to participate in the gift culture. This led me to my own understandings and definition of gift. My experience has taught me to value only intangible gifts. Even if I receive or give a material gift, I only look for the underlying intangible exchange which it creates in the process of gifting.
Rating a gift as “greatest” is a daunting task for me. I adore all gifts with equal love. IMHO, it’s only the receiver of the gift who can tell if he or she has received any gift or not. Giver’s claim of gifting something is totally insignificant.
This post has led me to recall some of the gifts I think I gave, which led me to understand and value gifts better:
A Random Gift
Once I was eating some fruits while seated on a bench in a public place, I noticed a poor beggar looking at me temptingly. I called him near me and requested if he would want to eat some with me. He was so shy of my offer, he couldn’t utter anything. I gestured him to sit beside me. He hesitantly sat on the farthest end of the bench. I offered him some fruits, which we ate together in silence. After finishing when I got up, he still couldn’t speak anything but I could see tears of gratitude in his eyes. He bowed down and touched my feet and began to cry. Such genuine gestures of gratitude are hard to come by on a daily basis. It makes our day and even justifies our own existence.
Life is a precious gift
Back in my school days, one of my friends was in extreme depression and had suicidal tendencies. I brought him to my home in the hope that I along with a few other friends will motivate him to hang on to this life. But unfortunately, I couldn’t help him. He spent only a few hours with me and left my home on some pretext and in the middle of that deadly cold winter night he dived into deep waters of a lake to never come back. His last casual question to me, which probably remained unanswered, was “Why should I live? What’s life for?”
I had contemplated on this question a number of times after this incident. I realized that life in itself is the most precious gift we ever received and we need to learn to adore it first. We don’t need any reason to survive. It’s even worth to spend all our life in search of answer to just that one question, “What’s life for?”. Why should we expect answers from others which we can find ourselves? It has taught me to give more respect and importance to all life on the planet.
This incident motivated me to gift a huge sum of money to a few of my friends who were in depression or had suicidal tendencies because of financial problems at some stage of their lives. Helping to put their lives back on track was relieving to all of their family members as well as me. Putting back those lost smiles back on a family gave me immense happiness and peace from within.
Free Life is a gift worth giving & living
I also stood as surety for some of remotely acquainted people to me, who were imprisoned for no good reason at all. You can read one of these stories here . So I not only revered life, but a free life as a gift, which I wanted to offer to one and all. Once out of prison, when they shared their feelings of getting their freedom back with me, for which they have almost lost their hopes, with their eyes filled with tears of joy and a loving tight hug, I felt elated and excited for them.
All life forms are invaluable
Going a little further, I realized that it’s not just humans that crave to live a free and happy life but all sentient beings on this planet want to survive and they put their best to their own struggle for life. This got me turn vegan and I started spreading the philosophy of co-existence & non-violence. Last year, I took a thousand mile journey on foot to touch over one hundred thousand lives with this message of compassion. Even if one person changed and adopted a life of compassion, I was thrilled to see that hundreds of lives are being saved by just this little action. This kept me moving on and on. Sometimes we even get a feedback or a credit (like in this post today) at other times we don’t even know what happened later on. In most of the above examples, I ain’t in touch with anyone of them. Even if we remain in touch, we never recall those incidents to claim a credit or something.
I don't believe in material gifts. Value of gift is not in the material being exchanged but the intangibles being exchanged on its pretext. I don’t believe a gift should create any sort of obligation. It is not a one way trade that a gift-giver should be entitled of some credit or a receiver of the gift should be obliged to his/her giver. If it is so, it’s not a gift, it is a donation. A gift is a two-way transaction where both parties get the benefit instantly. Otherwise the transaction of gift is not complete. Whenever I give a gift, I receive a gift in return. If I make someone happy, that happiness makes me happier. That’s what the transaction of gift is about. Nothing remains due in it. If it creates some obligation then you are not gifting but you are giving some mental burden, a type of harassment in return of some material thing.
So it’s really hard to figure out whether I 'gave' a gift or 'received' a gift. I’d rather say that the greatest gift I ever gave is to myself. Whenever I gift anything, I gift it to myself. All the above gifts I described were actually gifts to myself. They made me feel worthy of my existence, made me happy, gave me joy, peace, a meaning to my life. I’ve never given anything, I’ve always received a lot!
Do leave your feedback, reactions and criticism in the comments below. I love positive interactions with you. If you just upvote my post, I do feel happy. But I'd be happier if you leave a comment too.
I sometimes send a small gift of 101 cents to 999 cents to one of the comments here depending upon my mood and account liquidity level. Hope you won't mind a small tip if sending that makes me happy.
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