‘It is better to give than to
receive’, or is it?
Try this exercise with a friend.
Take a very ordinary item like a
pen or a fork. Ask your friend to give it to you as though presenting a gift.
You reply, very politely, that
kind though it is of them, you cannot accept the pen because you already have
several and it might be more useful to someone else or to the giver. (Classic, ”You shouldn’t have!”)
Ask your friend how he/she feels.
Let your friend repeat the
presentation as before.
This time you reply to the effect
that you are delighted to receive the pen, that though you have others, you are
going to keep this one specially for your crosswords and therefore when
relaxing and doing crosswords you will think of your friend.
Ask the friend how he/she feels
now and is there a difference between the first reaction and the second.
Although the exercise is
contrived the feelings are still very different because in the first scenario
the act of giving was not completed by the act of receiving. Person A did not
give the giver the gift of giving.
Giving and receiving are flip
sides of the same coin and one is not complete without the other.
I have always found receiving
much more difficult than giving and it is only in recent years that I have
realised how selfish I have been.
In my early days of ‘therapping’,
I thought I could cure the world. Don’t worry, I soon got over that. One of the
things I did was to give my services away to those ‘I judged’ needed it. There
were 3 consequences of this. First, the client did not value the treatment and
would be quite casual about turning up and second, I disempowered the client
and keeping them in the therapist/client loop and third, I wasn’t making any
money. None of these were outcomes that I sought, and I quickly learned that if
someone needed a discount or even barter, it had to be on a negotiated basis. I
was not in a position to ‘judge’ whether someone needed free treatment and this
colossal piece of arrogance needed to be swept away. Anyone who wanted any
skills I might have, always wanted to pay in some way and I had to learn to realise
that as part of their empowerment.
My Dad told me ‘don’t let them
see you’re hurt’. He also told me not to raise my head above the parapet or
someone will shoot it off.
I had been fiercely independent
and proud of that. What a fool! No wonder I was lonely and afraid. I thought
that being independent kept me from looking vulnerable and therefore weak.
Now, the Universe has taught me a
series of vulnerability lessons. When my world suddenly fell apart when It was
discovered that I had breast cancer and atrial fibrillation, I had to learn to
receive the hard way.
Well I am still here and now in
my later years, what with Age Related Deterioration (see ARD blog), more
vulnerable than ever. But allowing myself to receive the love and support of my
Husband and my friends and family makes my life richer than ever.
Frankie x
