Today I am sitting with something that has been an aspect of my life for a long time.
The way I relate to others. The way I give and the way I take.
I have noticed that my giving has often come with an invisible tag attached. Not deliberately. Not maliciously. But somewhere beneath the surface, a quiet calculation has been running. I give this, so I should receive that. I offer my time, my attention, my care – and I ashamedly expect something in return. Reassurance. Commitment. A sign that I am valued.
It is not a fair exchange. It is not even a conscious one. But it is there.
This pattern has shaped many of my closest relationships. The ones I have cared about most deeply have also been the ones where the invisible balance sheet has been most active. I give, and I wait. I wait for the return that never quite arrives in the way I hoped. And then the ache sets in. The sense of being unfulfilled. The quiet resentment that I would never admit to out loud.
Today I am asking myself something difficult.
What if giving is not a transaction? What if giving is simply the natural expression of what flows through me? Not a loan to be repaid. Not an investment in future security. Just a movement of care that asks for nothing in return. To love and give for the pure sake of it, like being so full that you’re at a bursting point and giving freely is actually a much needed lightening of your load.
I have tasted this kind of giving, briefly, in rare moments. The feeling of offering something without needing anything back. It is light. It is free. It does not leave me empty. It leaves me fuller than I was before. And I have gone through many expressions of this, but I remember only a few. The one’s I remember are the ones that I thought I didn’t care about, but deep down, I had in a way weaponised giving as a means to compel an unspoken satiation of my own desires – albeit
But the habit of transaction runs deep. And this connects to something I have been learning. The neediness, the grasping, the feeling of emptiness – these are not signs that I lack something. They are signs that I have forgotten what I already am. The one who appears to gives does not exist. The one who takes does not exist except as means to an end. There is only awareness, and within awareness, giving and taking appear like waves on the ocean. They rise. They fall. They are not the ocean.
And yet the heart still reaches out, sometimes out of genuine desire to satisfy someone else’s need, but at other times as a means to attract graceful favour to satiate my own need for other’s recognition of my good deed. It still wants to be held. It still wants to be sure.
Even this commentary is perhaps just another cry out for recognition with the hope that someone else’s recognition of my observation will push the deep sense of the ultimate solitary isolation of our common oneness away. Perhaps the path is not to stop wanting. Maybe the path is to watch the wanting, to give it what it is crying out for.. To let it be there, like a child crying for attention, and to hold it gently without giving it everything it demands, but feeling in your very being its lament and need. Perhaps. that is the true giving.
Give and take. It is just another dance. And the one who dances is not really here.
Maybe that is enough for today.