Whether we receive from others or gift ourself, the purging of gifts collected in a lifetime may bring some interesting challenges.
What a gift is, however, we must first delve into to understand.
A gift- g.iven i.ntentionally f.or t.hee.
Until you have the means to healthily get things for yourself without losing control, receiving a gift is a rather less expensive alternative.
In expectancy to receive something waited for, true character may be put to a test.
In one of our favorite family movies, The Temptations, there is this line, “Whoever said success makes you the person you really are…” in reference to David Ruffin before he was portrayed to start going downhill, befits my thoughts on gifts here.
Gifts don’t have to be limited to just materialistic things.
All that we have, all that we are, can each be categorized as gifts specifically given us at some time in our lives.
We were gifted from the very moment of conception.
Life itself is our very first gift given to each of us. We beat out all others for our individual spot.
As we grow, we inherently receive or discover more gifts to unravel. Some, we believe to have worked for and thus, have earned. Other gifts, we simply have effortlessly been given.
Some gifts, we dare ask for and anticipate to receive.
When you have been waiting on something for some time, the wait can understandably be unbearable.
Once you receive what you’ve waited for, the true test is how you handle what has been given you.
Do we all cherish the same way of whatever each of us is individually given?
Do not some of us sneak a peak of gifts long before meant to be opened, hoping for that one present?
Do not some of us open too soon where we find ourselves not knowing how to handle what has now been given us?
Then, are there those of us who silently express fear to find out what will be deemed as ours?
Patience may well be fear beneath the calm waters.
With some years having no gifts to find under a tree as a child, I have trained my heart, mind, body, and spirit to have patience when I am told there is one for me to open.
If patience is truly a virtue, I learned to acquire such with inadvertent training.
Upon mastery, patience becomes a part of your daily present, suppressing any fear that may come along.
How one handles any given present suggests how one values and thus, cares for, what has been received. Yes?
While one dreams on what one is to become, the daily gifts to unravel are there to help pave the way.
And, yet, we don’t always like what we’ve been given. Yes?
And, yet, we sometimes place the burden or wait of what we think we need on others. Yes?
While patience may be at play, fear of what may or may not be received also plays along.
Do we sometimes, then, think we are empty-handed just because we lack what we wished for, unclear between want and need?
If we think to have enough so that anything else additional would be a surplus of already our supplies, would we ever have an empty hand?
That way, upon receiving anything more to the unquestionably priceless- one’s life, health, dignity, honor, and (hopefully) self-respect, one accepts excess with gratitude.
Thus, could not one choosing happiness prior to unraveling anything still to be revealed grant one power to call upon of what is ahead no matter of whatever is or isn’t received?
Can there be good to find in everything, even in moments of most difficulty or greatest feel of emptiness?
While gratitude can be explicitly plenteous, does one’s care to follow always similarly equate?
Sometimes, with too much, what to be thankful for can become more unclear than when it seems nothing is, instead, to be found.
Is it not how to perceive what is given you, something or nothing, key to happiness?
Is it what is given us that gives us joy or, rather, the joy we have already calls upon how we will feel regardless of what has yet to be given us?
Which do we and can actually control?
And when we do get what we had hoped for, how good are we at taking care of it to last?
Do we know of its value and if we did, would we have put more effort to care for it even more? Have we?
Is such good intentions to care for something at first seen as priceless, ephemeral?
Does not understanding value and worth, losing some precious jewels and valuables in time, teach us more sensibility to understand actual and true worth?
And, do we always know? Do we see the worth of anything given us right away? Are we not guilty of putting worth on something on our own discretion regardless of its actual value?
Are we sometimes better off not receiving something we could care less to have than nothing at all?
Do we hold the character of wanting to have something anyway, even if we know our handling of such gift would not be good or worthy of its worth?
Do we hold the character of thinking more is better than less, even if much have no value?
To humor, which takes greater space? Nothing? Or, something you didn’t want or need in the first place?
And, yet, when deciding which of all possessions, whether one is with great consumption or just a few, do not each worth or value differ depending on who is asked?
Emotions meddling with perception in all directions.
One could be perceived to be abundantly filled but see themselves to be most empty, still missing so much more.
One could be perceived to be completely without and, yet, see themselves to be overflowing with abundance.
When you arrive to see yourself abundant in either or any way, is that not plentiful in genuine happiness?
The terminology, priceless, rests not upon the proof of worth based on the merit given. Yes?
One must clearly unravel our daily gifts, the present, with such a mindset that no matter what, it will bring more good to one’s already abundance.
However, our clarity is not always so clear.
At one point, perhaps, but in time, we may think different of what we once held dear.
To determine the worth of what something will be to us individually tomorrow based on today can be a daily game of chance.
Do we not all gamble in some sense?
Stocks, collectibles, minerals, for instance, can only be of value when regarded to be in demand, a desire, or a rarity.
Tomorrow, the value of any such could drastically change- some for the better, some for the worse.
We drive forward (let’s hope not backward) to prophetically play in life’s gambling games whether in health, finances, love, power, or pure existence.
Have we yet certainty?
My husband and I recently were in a hobby store. He had to let out an observably stinging laugh upon seeing an action figure he had given away as a child now worth thousands.
An approximately 5-inches tall action figure.
Should we hold onto every gift our children have received in their lifetime now?
Do we tell them to?
How do you truly determine what is of value worth keeping?
Do you simply give things time and space in your life anyway?
What if time and space become a lesser option?
Does not one have to gamble between what to hold onto and what to let go?
Could you not find one (or, several) to admit they lost what they should have held onto?
In hindsight, do we subconsciously begin to think to just embrace gaining nothing, and thus, at least be ahead, for once, by already sabotaging all that we perhaps should treasure?
Is this what people do to beat out the odds of winning? Lose first?
How much does one truly have to value?
How much of what we value truly valuable?
Glass half empty.
Glass half fulll.
Should we not be grateful for the water for us to drink instead?
Can we focus on seeing things for what they are and what they have to offer, gifted to us as the present of time?
If one presents itself as of value, should you not regard it as is?
Likewise, if one does not, should you regard it as otherwise?
In both cases, did not both have the potential to be of value to you?
However, is it the half empty, the half full, or, the water itself, that cast doubt in you of which to value as your present gift?
Is not the gamble of how to handle what is your present within each time and space in your training to perspectively understand each with patience as gifts being unraveled before you?
Whether the glass become empty or completely full, is it not the water inside we must focus in trusting to drink? Yes?
Our youngest two cleared their rooms of anything they’ve outgrown to start our new year. Both my husband and I were astonished at how they managed to keep hidden from plain sight all that they took out.
It was like an eviction scene dually happening.
While my husband and I will have final say as to what will be the few kept (since we paid for merely 99.9% of all that we now see parked outside their rooms) to the many that will be donated, it is interesting to think each of what they were seeing today as no longer needed or wanted were all, at one time, deemed keepable and desired.
Giving our children freedom to decide what they value most must be essential for their self growth.
They will one day look at an action figure at a hobby store and laugh the same way my husband recently did.
They will need to apply this practice, this training, with everything in their lives. From things to people, they must learn gifts to keep and gifts to let go.
Each moment given with a person, whether born into those you find yourself domiciled with or those you briefly meet in line at a grocery store, a moment could be priceless.
It is the moment one gives you that one must see as a gift.
I have gathered precious wisdom from those whom I briefly met while hardly anything within many years from those who have found themselves in my company for quite some time.
It is in perhaps, vein truth, I say that I know now my presence was a present for others, not always the other way around.
When it is clear that one no longer values you as part of their present, you must face truth within to determine if there is any value in sticking around.
They saw you as the glass half empty or half full. Although the same trusted source gifted as one’s present, you would not be enough to quench one’s thirst.
While tossed out, drained, or simply dumped, water returns back the same to offer oneself as a gift for another.
That 5-inch action figure one may have outgrown says nothing of the thousands it will happily cost to someone else.
We all must purge gifts we simply outgrow.
This says nothing to change the value of the gift that will revealingly be deemed, if not already, priceless.
Which gifts we hold onto is to our own gamble in time.
