The Gift of Giving
On giving and receiving gifts
Merry Christmas to all those celebrating! This week, I am sharing Seneca’s advice on how to give and receive gifts. This timeless wisdom was originally shared last year. Wishing joy and health to all of you and your families.
“Among all our greatest and most numerous vices, none are more common than those that arise from an ungrateful heart.”
-Seneca, Moral Letters
The holidays are here and that means that for the majority of us, exchanging gifts is a common practice. In addition to being able to spend time with our friends and family, we look forward to exchanging gifts with one another to show how much each other means to us.
But what are gifts?
According to Seneca, writing over 2,000 years ago, gifts are “generous acts, done in an eager and voluntary spirit, that bring joy, and also reap joy, from the act of giving.”
Below are a few tactics for handling the gift giving (and receiving) of the holiday season.
Give to Give, Not to Receive
“Giving is something to be sought for its own sake.”
Seneca argues that giving is within itself the gift we receive.
“Let us give in the same spirit with which we would want to receive — above all, generously, promptly, with no hesitation.”
Nothing destroys the joys of giving more than when one must ask for a specific gift as it destroys the intentions of giving the gift in the first place. It becomes more of an obligation than an act our of kindness.
“If someone doesn’t give because he didn’t receive, then he only gave in order to receive; he supplies the ingrates — whose vice is to avoid giving back whenever possible — with just cause.”
It is through the thought and action of giving that we find virtue.
Be Happy with What You Receive
“Greed keeps reaching ever farther, not comprehending its own happiness, since it looks only to where it’s heading, not where it came from.”
The art of gift giving and receiving is in the intention of giving and receiving, not within the gift itself. It is in the fact that someone thought to give and gift in the first place.
“No one can be both jealous and grateful at the same time. Jealousy belongs to the bitter and discontented, gratitude to the joyous. Then too, there’s the fact that all of us know only the moment that rushes past before us; only rarely do we turn our minds backward toward the past.”
It is through gratitude that we properly receive gifts because it is through gratitude for the action of being presented a gift that matters most. If we look to what we don’t have, or if we look to the next gift we are to receive, we miss out on the present moment, the greatest gift of all.
“Gratitude is something to be sought for its own sake: Ingratitude is a thing to be shunned for its own sake. No other flaw so much undoes and tears apart the harmony of the human race.”
Give and then Forget
“There should be no talk of what we have given. Those who give reminders are looking to be paid back. Don’t harp on it, don’t call it back to mind-unless you evoke an earlier gift by making a new one!”
The key to giving is in fact remembering that it is the intention, why we gave in the first place, that matters most. If we hold a gift over someone’s head, we miss out on the art of giving entirely.
“Here’s the mark of great and good hearts: to seek good deeds for their own sake, not for the profits that flow from them, and to look for good people even after meeting bad ones.”
And as a final reminder:
“The best sort of person gives freely, never makes demands, is delighted by returns, forgets what was given (honestly and truly), and takes payback in the spirit of one accepting a gift.”
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Until next week,
D.A. DiGerolamo