Life gives to each one of us in so many ways. For starters, there's the bounty of the senses, including chocolate chip cookies, jasmine, sunsets, wind singing through pine trees, and just getting your back scratched.
What does life give you? Consider the kindness of friends and family, made more tangible during a holiday season, but of course continuing throughout the year. Consider the giving of the people whose hard work is bound up in a single cup of coffee, or all those people in days past who figured out how to make a stone ax -- or a fire, edible grain, loom, vaccine or computer. Consider all the people who wrote plays and novels, made art or music, and developed mathematics and science, paths of psychological growth, and profound spiritual practices. Consider a few people whose names you know, and the tens of thousands -- millions, really -- whom you will never know but whose contributions feed, clothe, transport, entertain, inspire and heal us each day. Consider the giving of the natural world, the sound of rain, the sweep of sky and stars and the majesty of mountains. How does nature feed you? How about your DNA? The moment of your conception presented you with the build-out instructions for becoming a human being, the hard-won fruits of 3.5 billion years of evolution.
You don't earn these things. You can't. They are just given. The best you can do is receive them. That helps fill your own cup, which is good for both you and others. It keeps the circle of giving going; when someone deflects or resists one of your own gifts, how inclined are you to give again? It draws you into deep sense of connection with life. And if nothing else, it's simply polite!
But how do you receive generosity?
Start with something a friend has recently given you, such as a smile, an encouraging word or simply some attention. Then open to feeling given to. Notice any reluctance here, such as thoughts of unworthiness, or a background fear of dependence, or the idea that if you receive, then you will owe the other person something. Try to open past that reluctance to accept what's offered, to take it in, and enjoy the pleasures of this. Let it sink in that receiving generosity is good.
Next, pick something from nature. For example, open to the giving folded into an ordinary apple, including the cleverness and persistence it took, across hundreds of generations, to gradually breed something delicious from its sour and bitter wild precursors. See if you can taste their work in its rich sweetness. Open even more broadly to the nurturing benevolence in the whole web of life.
Then try something non-living, perhaps something with no apparent value, like a bit of sand. Yet in that single grain are echoes of the Big Bang, the gift that there is something at all rather than nothing. Who knows what deeper, perhaps transcendental gifts underlie the blazing bubbling emergence of our universe?
Take a breath, and enjoy receiving trillions of atoms of oxygen -- most of them the gifts of an exploding star.
Consider some of the intangibles flowing toward you from others, including good will, fondness, respect and love. See if you can drink deeply from the stream coming from one person; as you recognize something positive being offered to you, try to experience it in a felt way in your body and emotions. Then see if you can do the same with other people. If you can, include your parents and other family members, friends and key acquaintances.
Try to stretch yourself further. Recall a recent interaction that was a mixed bag for you, with some good in it but also some bad. Focus on whatever was accurate or useful in what the other person communicated, and try to receive that as a valuable offering. Open your mind to the good that is implicit or down deep in the other person, even if you don't like the way it has come out.
Keep listening, touching, tasting, smelling and looking for other overflowing generosity coming your way.
So many gifts.
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Friends and family understand and when my birthday comes, Christmas, or just for the heck of it they will send presents - knowing full well that I cannot reciprocate like I used to do. It has become easier as the years have gone by, but it still gives me a slightly guilty feeling in not being in a position to give in return.
So - I save all my change and then roll it up and turn it into bills. Gas to go to places - a meal at a buffetor to buy items I know they will like. I volunteer at two non-profit thrift stores - get a percentage off purchases - some items are brand new or very gently used.
You truly find out who really loves you when you don't have the ability to give as you did in the past. And that is a "true gift" - not just the presents, but the thoughtfulness and consideration they show. It can be a 6-pack of favorite soda or a few packs of vegetable or flower seeds - it truly is "the thought that counts".
When people give me things, like clothing or furniture, I almost always accept, because of the practice involved for both "giver" and "receiver", and if it's something I can't use, I pass it on to someone less fortunate, thereby insuring it gets recycled.
Thank you for your wise words and all the best, Rick Hanson