Acquire the gift of giving

By Suneeta Chahar

GIVING and receive- ing gifts is an age-old tradition all over the world. Whenever and wherever there is an occasion to celebrate, people give gifts as per their convenience and status. Earlier it was just a token of love and affection but now it has become a source of coming into the good books of people. A person’s proximity to the recipient of the gift is judged by the worth of the gift. In fact, we bribe people in the garb of gifts.

Some people do not even like to show that they accept gifts though they return the gifts to the giver after opening them. What does it indicate? Was the gift not of their choice? Or was it not worth accepting? And for some people it’s humiliating to accept the gifts which are not beautifully wrapped.

How ugly have we become in this materialistic age! The spirit, the feeling with which the person brings the gift is totally ignored — the desire to share happiness or a joyous moment.

Today’s world is full of social climbers and these people do not have the fine art of giving or receiving gifts with grace.

They assume that gifts mean receiving expensive things without having to pay for them. Do we ever sit and ponder over the "art of giving"? It means being generous! Not moneywise but giving a part of yourself — in the form of helping someone. We should try to look at "giving" from new angle.

In 1918, a terrible flu epidemic broke out in New York city. Nurses were overworked and this affected their performance. At such a time, an exclusive club, the members of which were elderly and the rich, decided to help though it would have been easier for them to donate large sums of money. Instead, they scrubbed the hospital floors, looked after the patients and comforted the dying and the survivors. One would call them generous, who gave not money but themselves. There are many people who would do that even today.

To accept graciously is the other side of generosity’s golden coin. An ungraciously accepted gift can inflict deep hurt. We seem to have lost the sensitivity to smile and accept a gift and welcome the person. Indeed, it is an endearing quality because it’s a joy in itself to meet sensitive and spontaneous people — such people who are never malicious. When they spread happiness around themselves — that is their gift, not to one or two people but to the whole world itself.

Some people are lonely and they have none to confide in though they are surrounded by people all the time. If one gives them a patient hearing by spending one’s time with them or listening to their woes, what bigger gift can they get than this?

One has offered them a sympathetic ear. But do the recipients of such priceless gifts ever realise this? Apparently not, because they give importance to the things which can be easily purchased by money. How shallow have we all become! How correctly has I.A.R. Wylie said, "There is, I have found, no better gift than the gift of one’s time. In no other offering is there so much of yourself — without which the gift is bare".

Divali has just gone by and Hindus give sweets to their friends and relatives. It’s just a gesture of goodwill. But a high official found it humiliating to accept the sweets packet because it was not beautifully wrapped. What an irony! One doesn’t get embarrassed by receiving a gift but feels humiliated because it is not beautifully wrapped. What will such a person know of beautiful sentiments and good wishes that go with the gift. It is not his fault if a person gets carried away with new found status and money. How beautifully has Leigh Hunt put it, "To receive a present in the right spirit, even when you have none to give in return, is to give one in return". In olden times on the birthdays or weddings of kings and princes, the common people gifted them a coin only. And it was never considered humiliating, for the gentry saw feeling and emotion underneath.

Most of us want to give. Fortunately, there are many forms of generosity. There is generosity in rejoicing in another’s good fortune and success. And there is the generosity of tolerance, which enables one to see things from another’s viewpoint.

There is generosity of fact, which avoids thoughtlessness, unkind word or deed; of patience, which listens to a tale of woe; of sympathy, which shares the burden of disappointment and grief.

Perhaps the greatest of all generosities is that which gives the benefit of the doubt — which refuses to retail malicious gossip, which believes the best rather than the worst.

But when we talk of generosity and giving, one thinks none could have spoken better than Almustafa, the chosen and the beloved, to the people of Orphalese when he was returning to the isle of his birth.

On being asked by a rich man to speak of giving, he answered: "You give but little when you give of your possessions.m It is when you give of yourself that you truly give".