The Constellation Learning Newsletter
November 2009

The daylight is diminishing along with the temperatures reminding me that the holidays are just around the corner. They creep up on me every year and every year I go through the “this year I’ll be organized and have all my shopping done early” kind of thought process. Rarely happens.

In recent years the materialism associated with the season has slowly lost its sparkle and I find myself drawn to different kinds of gift-giving; different priorities with different promises. What is it all about if not examining what we give (and receive) and why?

Still, I do enjoy flipping through the catalogues.

Cynthia Barlow

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~ Monthly Message ~

“Pleasure is spread through the earth
in stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find. ”

-- William Wordsworth, 1806 --

I saw my sister in September and she handed me a birthday gift: It was obviously a small book. My birthday is in November, but I’ve never been terribly good at delayed gratification so I opened it. It is by David Foster Wallace, the wildly talented and tormented writer whose first novel, Infinite Jest, garnered him the crown of brilliant writer and genius observer of life. Coupled with Wallace’s depression, this was a heavy mantel and he eventually ended his life.  The book my sister had given me, entitled This is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, About Living a Compassionate Life, was delivered to the graduating class of Kenyon College in 2005. (To read full transcript: http://timm84.wordpress.com/2009/04/27/david-foster-wallace-speech/)

The talk is readable in thirty minutes; livable in maybe thirty years, if you really work at it. Every word resonated with me. An excerpt:

“If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important—if you want to operate on your default setting—then you, like me, probably will not consider possibilities that aren’t pointless and annoying.

But if you’ve learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars—compassion, love, the  subsurface unity of all things.

Not that that mystical stuff’s necessarily true: The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re going to try to see it. This, I submit, is the freedom of real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted: You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t.”

I adore giving gifts, small things, for no reason whatsoever, but over the years I find the designated days of mandatory gift-giving increasingly confining, constricting.

Consequently, giving those big gifts at holiday time no longer has the same meaning for me that it did twenty years ago. It’s been a slow slide into this new mind-set, an erosion of previous delight in displays of affection through materialism. The bed-rock beneath has revealed itself as the gift of time, memories, and inclusion in a global mind-set through charitable giving donated in the names of loved ones.

There is no smugness, though, no self-righteousness attached with this now irrevocable personal perspective—on the contrary I have had to go through a real sense of loss, of stepping outside the magnetic field of our retail-based culture. Buying a gift is easier, it’s way more fun, and there’s always the potential joy of the receiver to fuel the retail revelry. Let’s face it, opening a new Red Rider BB gun (yes, I’m a “Christmas Story” fan) is far more preferable to my ten year old nephew than is the card he’s getting this year telling him that a life altering donation has been made in his name to help some nameless malnourished children in Africa.

Reality check: That said, I will probably put cold, hard cash in his envelope too, if only to catch a glimpse of light in his eyes, coward that I am.  Ten bucks and a pack of gum ought to do it.

The point is that it is no longer about the season, or the gifts, or even the people I love, it’s about me—why am I giving, and what am I giving, and what am I living when I give someone (anyone) anything, for any reason? How actively am I participating in the gift itself? Is it a meaningful experience for me? Because, if it is, then there will be meaning for the receiver. It’s that simple.

For a few years now I’ve been playing with this notion, giving my time, being in service to others instead of simply buying stuff, and I’ve discovered something. I’ve discovered that any gift—whether it’s holding a door open for the stranger behind, or a surprise visit to someone’s special occasion, or holding a friend’s hand when their pet dies, or a little book about living a compassionate life—all are of equal importance and carry life-altering power. The small gifts are no less important than the big ones, in fact, they may be more important.

Because the gift of our time and attention is the universal expression of love; it requires no wrapping paper or ribbon or name tag, and in the long run means more than anything anyone could ever buy.

Reality check: That said, there are lots of ways to find meaning in a retail experience. I had a total blast picking and ordering non-commercial gifts for various family members from Unicef, my charitable choice this year. And I’ll wander a mall somewhere for the holiday fever (call it retail by osmosis) if only to get some chocolate. Some priorities don’t change.

So maybe this year, as we go about selecting holiday gifts for those on our list, we might also consider the millions who didn’t make it on to anyone’s list: the dispossessed, the hungry, the tired, the hopeless. And everyone else we pass on the street.

A smile ought to do it.

“You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”

-- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet --

(For back issues please click here.)

__________________________________________

See our Newsletter Archives