Gifts Worth Giving
Gratitude, forgiveness, and self-care – By Stacey Huget
Many of us have mixed feelings about the gift-giving side of the holidays. Whether it’s the overly-commercial nature of the season, the bruising frenzy of shopping, or the frustration of not finding (or being able to afford) that “meaningful” gift – the so-called joy of the season can sometimes ring hollow.
Well, here are three gifts that are not commercial, don’t involve shopping, and are meaningful in a lasting way: gratitude, forgiveness, and self-care. More than saccharine platitudes, these are gifts that can be incredibly challenging to give – but profound in their impact, for the giver as well as the receiver.
Gratitude
In our consumption-crazed culture, so much of the focus during the holidays is on what we get, not on what we have. We are inundated with advertising, cleverly dressed in the guise of good cheer amidst the warmth of family and friends but designed to simply feed our hunger for acquisition – perversely conflating the two. Not only does this appetite for material goods contribute little to our lasting happiness, it obscures the very thing that would: appreciation for the far more fulfilling but non-material aspects of our lives.
In our “get” culture, gratitude becomes something we express after something else happens; it becomes conditional. We lose sight of gratitude as something we can give now, always, as a way of being – regardless of hardship or privilege. This kind of gratitude is a contagion of happiness, not just for those we express it to but for what the act of expressing it does for us and who we are.
Albert Einstein is often quoted as saying: There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
Miraculous or not, there is much to be thankful for in our lives: our connection with other people, our curiosities, our own agency in the world, the very fact we are alive.
At the back of our brains, wrote G.K. Chesterton, the English poet, there is a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence. Ah yes. That.
More than saccharine platitudes, these are gifts that can be incredibly challenging to give – but profound in their impact, for the giver as well as the receiver.
Imagine if we were to redirect our acquisitive energies to fuelling that forgotten blaze within ourselves, and for and with one another? To actually thank the people in our lives for how they uniquely contribute to our joy and sense of wellbeing. To inspire in them the open heart with which they in turn can express gratitude to others. Would that not be a gift worth giving?
Forgiveness
What grudges are we holding? Whether we hold them against other people for slights inflicted, or against the world for the disappointments of life, grudges are leaky things – and what they leak can poison an open heart, connection, and ease in life. Grudges are toxic.
Forgiveness, on the other hand, is like fresh air. It doesn’t change the things that happen, or even condone them. With deep understanding, it simply releases ill feeling like a bird from a trap.
To understand everything is to forgive everything, said Buddha.
This letting go is a gift we give that not only lightens another’s load, but ours as well. It frees us all up to engage in conversations, activities, and behaviors that we previously told ourselves were inconceivable, unavoidable, impossible.
Forgiveness lets in the possible, lets in opportunity. We open ourselves up to connection, to life – and that’s what occurs. So, who are the people in our lives with whom we wish to reconnect through forgiveness? Who are the villains in our lives who we can either recast or abandon altogether – giving them back whatever imagined power we told ourselves they had over us?
However deep we may need to dig to do it, forgiveness is a priceless and liberating gift.
Self-Care
Self-care is more that sweet self-indulgences. It’s about taking care of ourselves, setting and honoring our boundaries, saying what needs to be said, and giving ourselves permission to be who we really are – without apology.
The people we love and who love us want this for us. They want to know we are safe and well and living fully. They want this knowledge far more than they want a toaster or bathrobe or junk jewelry. They’ll derive greater pleasure from it, not just on a single day but throughout the year.
So yes, we can communicate our needs and our limits with other people – not as a timid or guilt-ridden “ask” but as a generous invitation for mutual respect, an expression of our trust in their ability to at least acknowledge and understand us, even if they are unable to always respond in the way we’d like. That is about them, not us – and it’s where our forgiveness can come in.
As daily practices that require us to dig deep within ourselves, gratitude and forgiveness and self-care are profound expressions of our love and connection and growth as individuals. They are what give meaning to our relationships, joy to our living, and an opening to our spirit.
We can begin to have the conversations we’ve always wanted to have with the people we love and say those things that have been left unsaid for so long. Not out of anger or resentment, but with open-hearted honesty – that bridge between us that needs building. That bridge we long to cross so we can connect in a way we haven’t done. They very likely want that too.
And we can liberate ourselves to just be who we are around the people in our life – without anticipating or fretting over their judgments, without second-guessing our value or lovability, without veiling our true selves in the affectations and compromises that not only feed our own resentment but that also create walls between us. Our authenticity is the gift that only we can give.
As daily practices that require us to dig deep within ourselves, gratitude and forgiveness and self-care are profound expressions of our love and connection and growth as individuals. They are what give meaning to our relationships, joy to our living, and an opening to our spirit.
As Jack Kornfield says, Spiritual opening is not a withdrawal to some imagined realm or safe cave. It is not pulling away, but a touching of all experience of life with wisdom and with a heart of kindness, without any separation.
Amidst the sometimes-shallow hurly-burly of the holiday season, may we remember the things that matter most to those we love. May we give them freely from our deepest place – these gifts that keep on giving throughout the year.
