(A sobering realisation hit home by Covid-19)
All my life I have been a giver; I have loved helping or enabling people around me, my family, friends and even acquaintances, believing that I was doing God’s work itself. I truly felt it was the greatest gift that I could give. My high moments were when someone asked for my help, and in fact a whole lot of times I would offer help without being asked. No prizes for guessing my favourite refrain: ‘I can’t say no’, and I revelled in it.
Let me start with a little bit of context here; I grew up in a small town, where I was very privileged and fortunate to be able to offer help to others. It continued when I grew up and got married, with a life of plenty and more for me. I did always recognise that I was blessed, and therefore loved sharing my plenty or privilege with others. It soon became not only a habit, but a necessity for me to feel useful and worthy; and I was blind to this need in me at that time.
If I am to dig deeper within myself today, I realise that the need to give took over my life so completely, that sometimes I would enforce this help on to others; even hurting some in the process. As I write this, it takes me back to a particular incident in high school, when I kept insisting on giving a friend (x) a lift in my vehicle, when another friend (y) had already offered to do so. A third friend stopped me as she realised that I was almost trampling upon x and y with the insistence of my generosity. I am horrified to say that in my head I didn’t trust y to do it. And an even bigger thought passed through my head - would I cease to be of use then to my friends?
As I went along, I am wondering if for me (and me only, I don’t mean to judge anyone out there at all), the desire to help came sometimes from a sense of power, and a few times, a misplaced sense of superiority? In the first case, it was saying to myself that ‘I am more privileged than you’ and hence I can help or give you the gift of my generosity. I am not saying that the thought is a negative one, but with my recent introspection, I have realised that it is demeaning and disempowering the receiver of that gift or generosity.
Now the tougher part; did I really assess myself as superior when helping or giving sometimes? I realise I did, especially when it came to tasks where I opined myself as good and capable. If I were to now revisit those times when ‘not saying no’ was so difficult for me, this humbling realisation does strike me; I almost always thought I was the better person to do it, or even worse; that if I left it to others, the desired result wouldn’t be achieved at all.
I hope I am able to carry the above sobering awareness into my life journey, relationships and self-assessment of myself over a sustained period of time. Perhaps, I need to establish a practice, almost like a checklist of questions to myself, whenever I am tempted to give, and ensure that my deep-rooted intentions and beliefs are righteous before I offer, or even accept a request for help.
Let me now fast forward to a more self-aware Mala (I hope), who does not have the intentions laid out in the above paragraphs. Can I then continue to give without the privileged or superior dimensions? Of course I can, and here I again would like to question myself: Is that the greatest gift I can give? If not, why? What then, would be the greater gift?
Let me finally come to the part about why I am questioning myself about this intrinsic habit now. There have been a lot of changes in my personal life over the past year. These changes resulted in me, the always organised and prepared soul (to the extent that it was a joke that I would pack at least a week before any upcoming trip with detailed lists), being completely unprepared for a close friends’ wedding. Two weeks before the wedding, I didn’t have any clothes to wear, and due to my excessive weight loss, nothing I owned fit me anymore. I considered my options for a couple of days and then in passing mentioned this to a close friend, with no intention of asking her for help. She then turned around and offered if she could lend me her clothes. For a moment, I was taken aback as I had never borrowed or asked for clothes before that day. She noticed my hesitation, and then didn’t give me a choice, rather she sent me her entire wardrobe to choose from. In fact, she took over as my personal stylist for the wedding, and totally excelled at it!
That was the first time that I realised how very powerful and beautiful the gift of receiving is! As the person asking or receiving, I give authority to the other person to help me, and to better things for me that I would have not been able to do on my own. I truly enjoyed the receiving more than I have enjoyed anything for a long, long time.
At that time, I was still thinking of only my joy and I might not have dwelled or dug deeper on the above again if Covid had not hit us very soon after. Right at the beginning of the lockdown, a close friend asked me for something, and immediately, I felt blessed and grateful to be able to offer help. At that very moment, I was struck that the greatness truly belongs to the person asking for help, and not the giver as I had always assumed. In asking or receiving only do we allow and honestly give the greatest gift to others, as we give them permission to help us. True strength and power, as I humbly realise it today, is in asking or receiving help! As mentioned in my previous series of articles on Covid-19, I have asked for help more in the last two months than perhaps collectively in my entire life, and never been happier about myself than I am today! I am grateful, blessed and humbled to be able to offer the gift of giving and the greater gift of receiving!!!
What gift are you ‘giving’ today??
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