Is it better to give than to receive?

‘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