This is the season of giving, and it has been said in a frequently reliable source that it is better to give than to receive. I don't know about that, but it's certainly a lot easier and the rewards are greater. It's odd that giving is so much easier, since it doesn't seem to come naturally to us. In the rearing of children, mothers are always asking advice on how to overcome the incredible selfishness of their babies. Children of two have a strong sense of ownership, and another toddler coming to play with their toys is not welcomed. Young mothers seem, for some reason, to be shocked at this, rather than understanding, but whether shocked or not, it is one of the primary things that they try to overcome in the continuing task of trying to civilize their children. We are early and thoroughly taught the virtues of generosity, so well that it often becomes second nature to us, but whether we ever learn to like it or not, we usually very much dislike its opposite, receiving, except under certain conditions. We can receive if we feel that we have earned the gift or have deserved it in some way, or if we can return it. Otherwise we feel burdened by it.
With recognition of problems in the give and take of living, we prefer to talk about sharing. In fact, sharing has become a buzzword in some groups, often Unitarian Universalist ones. It sounds even easier than giving, because it allows some of our inherent selfishness to be maintained. You get the same rewards that you get from giving, and you get to maintain an interest in whatever it is you're giving instead of losing it entirely.
I think, though, that we use the term too loosely, calling things sharing that really are not. If you have a nice red juicy apple, and someone else is eyeing it hungrily, to avoid being selfish, you may cut the apple in half and give half to that person. You haven't really shared the apple, you've simply given away half of it. When we use sharing as a buzzword, it means giving out personal information. That may sometimes may lead to true sharing, but in itself is merely giving and receiving. Sharing is when more than one person have a common interest in the whole of the same thing and attempt to do whatever they do with it in reference to one another's requirements.
Take that nice red juicy apple. It belongs to two of us. We can decide to cut it in half and each get one part of it, but when the apple is divided, at that point the sharing ends. Now each of us has an exclusive interest, not in the whole apple, but in our own half. If we like the idea of both of us continuing our common interest in the apple, a difficulty arises. We can decide not to eat it at all, but to keep it and share the look and smell of it, but that's not as much fun as eating it. Or I suppose we can try eating it together, though that has problems I don't even want to contemplate.
We also like to call lending sharing, allowing someone the temporary use of what belongs to us, but unless the use is common, it is not true sharing.
True sharing is only possible when the goals of all the sharing individuals are the same - when the separation between them, at least in regard to whatever is shared, ceases to exist. Sharing, then, is only real when we are so nearly one that one person's joys really do belong to the rest of the group, and so do the sorrows.
We are ultimately separate. We are individuals with our own likes and dislikes, ideals, goals, hopes, dreams, joys and sorrows, yet we are at the same time, one with each other in the human community, and to gain this oneness is a longing that all of our individualism does not remove. Division into the roles of giver and receiver is a separation, and so we try to deny it by using the word share to deny the separation. A great widener of that separation is the belief that it is so much better to give than to receive.
It is an oddity of our last hymnal, which has actually been addressed in the new one, that there was absolutely nothing in it which alluded to our dependence on other human beings, only about ways in which we should serve them. One of those hopeful civilizing mothers said to her small son that we were placed on this earth to serve others. He responded, "Then what were they put here for?" One answer is, of course, for us to serve them. After all, if no one receives, who will be left to take our generosity?
There's an old saying: If you want someone to be your friend, let that someone do you a favor. That is precisely true. If we do someone else a favor we feel good about ourselves and therefore we like the person who has made it possible to feel that way. To be the recipient, though, is uncomfortable. We never feel quite right until we have returned the favor.
Social intercourse is a quid pro quo arrangement. For people to feel comfortable with one another they need to feel that they are on an equal basis in giving and receiving. That need for equivalence seems to arise less from the perception that you have too much to give as that you have too little. The discomfort is being on the receiving end. People don't like feeling indebted. Think how upset you get when someone sends you a Christmas card when you didn't send one. You tend to rush right out and get one for them, hoping it isn't so late that they'll realize they weren't on your list. How much worse if they actually give you a gift!
There's a woman I know who loves doing things for other people. She likes giving gifts, writing notes, inviting people to her home. When she got sick herself, she tried to keep it a secret so that no one would feel obligated to do anything for her. Then she realized that, in a way, she owed them the opportunity and pleasure of nurturing her as she had nurtured them. To be able to receive as graciously and lovingly as one gives is just as important and much more difficult.
Part of the difficulty in receiving gifts or favors from others without equivalent return lies in the feeling that they are then one-up, that they have gained power by indebting you to them. The person who gives is in a power position in the relationship until you have returned a gift at least equal and preferably of greater value. It is humbling to receive a gift that you can't return. Note that most gifts given on a one-way basis are the ones from someone whose position of power is clear. In business, the boss may give gifts to employees, and a return is often inappropriate.
In this holiday season, people really do tend to fill with the spirit of giving, to give more widely and generously. Many charities make their appeals at this time because of that spirit. It's not just a last fling so you can take another charitable deduction off your income tax, though that can be persuasive. People really feel like giving more. I'm sure there's no mystical reason for that. We're just caught up in the idea. It's an opportunity to exercise our generous feelings. However, gift-giving does have some interesting dynamics that we might like to look at beyond the fact that people like to feel generous and powerful.
Sometimes, especially at this season, people feel an obligation to give gifts. This isn't a particularly comfortable feeling, and in part it is the power issue. If someone is going to give something to you, you feel obliged to give something to them. People like to give, but they like to give freely. To have to give is not really giving. It's paying for something - either for a return gift, or a relationship, or something of the sort. That's one of the problems with having certain proper times for giving. It sometimes becomes more of a job than a joy.
Then there's the issue of what to give and how. My former husband had an interesting style of gift-giving. He would ask me what I wanted, and if I told him I could be sure that that would not be what I would get, because then it wouldn't have been a surprise. He liked giving surprises. I never did figure out why he bothered to ask in the first place, but luckily he knew me well enough to give me something that I liked, and I learned not to tell him what I really wanted.
Some people's gift-giving reminds me of the argument that I have with the golden rule. I don't think that either Jesus or Confucius really had thought it out completely. Jesus said, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and Confucius said the same, only negatively, "Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you." That's how some people give gifts. They give you what they want. That leads me to believe that the golden rule could be better stated: Do unto others as they would wish you to do unto them. That might work well in other situations than gift-giving, too.
The joy of giving does not apply to obligatory gifts. That tends to be burdensome and even painful, and is not really giving at all. I'm not saying, however, that we should cut out Christmas gifts. This is in no way a polemic against materialism. Even if a gift is in some ways obligatory, if it is one that you want to give, that you select with sensitivity and the pleasure of the one who receives it in mind, it is a true gift, and the fact that you are giving it at this time is simply that it is appropriate, and you've been reminded of it. That's what the season is really for, not to make you give gifts that you don't want to give, but to remind you of the joys of giving. True gift-giving is giving freely, because you want to, with little sense of obligation and no insistence on, or even desire for, a return. This is the giving that we love to do. It is also the giving that is the hardest to receive - that requires humility.
Humility is not, like generosity, a virtue that we like to practice. It is not an easy thing to learn. It doesn't even sound like something we want to learn. We are strong, proud, rational. We are put here on this earth to help others less strong, less well-off than we. We do not need help. Oh, we know we're interdependent, but we can pay, on some level, for what we get. We give. If things get difficult for us, we don't ask for help. We can take care of ourselves, because we have learned to be givers, not takers. It is better, after all, to give than to receive.
It's rather odd that we want to give help to others and yet we don't want to take it for ourselves. I suspect it's a peculiar combination of arrogance and low self-esteem that causes this attitude. We feel that we can take care of anything that happens to us ourselves, and at the same time we feel that no one should really be bothered with us. Low self esteem that makes us feel that our problems would be a bother to others is not the same thing as humility.
Humility is the acceptance of your weaknesses, of your needs, without feeling less worthy than others because of them, since others, too, have needs and weaknesses. We give to others, but also we must let them give to us. Humility is realizing that there is not one person in the world who does not have something to give you - some knowledge that you lack, some strength that you need, some element of caring that makes your life more full -and it is the willingness to accept what others have to give.
The famous reading by St. Francis of Assisi says that it is in giving that we receive. It is also in receiving that we give. I have noticed that when people come to me for counseling, I always thank them. I may perhaps feel more grateful to them than they do to me, because they have given me the inestimable gift of receiving what I have to give.
I gave half the answer to the little boy's question of why others were put on earth - for us to serve. The other half is that they are on the earth to serve us, and our responsibility is to accept that service. Giving needs those who will receive, and thus is receiving a gift. Many Buddhist monks are mendicants. It's not that they are entirely without resources, not vowed to poverty, for example, as are certain Christian religious. It is because they are giving those who give to them the opportunity to acquire merit.
Giving that is obligatory or establishes power relationships is not true giving. Receiving that is grudging or ungracious is not proper receiving. True giving and receiving, though, are, like sharing, bonds between us which bridge our separateness, and establish the relationship of each to each which exists in spite of the final loneliness of the human condition.