When thinking of giving a gift, what do you consider? Do you ever consider these kinds of questions?
- What makes a gift valuable?
- What message does your gift convey?
- How do you want to share your energy?
Gifts in the Season of Love and Light
For me, this time of year is the beginning of the season of love and light.
The centerpiece of the celebration of Hanukkah is the candelabra, the menorah, with nine candles illuminating the night. Christmas is the promise of love and a reminder that love has always been in my life. Yule – the winter solstice – is the time of the return of light to the Earth in the form of lengthening days in the northern hemisphere.
Appreciation, Gratitude, Love
From my perspective, Love and light both include appreciation and grow it.
Noticing, or shedding light on, what is good and useful in something or someone – appreciating – leads to gratitude for those things. Love grows from attention to appreciation and gratitude as these expand.
Gift-giving reflects that we have been thinking about someone. Thinking about them is a form of caring. The true gift of giving is how we make our recipient feel with our gift. When we offer a heartfelt gift, we are giving heartfelt energy.
Start with ourselves
However, to give with heartfelt energy, we need to be clear and grounded and feel nurtured ourselves.
In this season, it is so easy to get swept up in the busyness of it, along with stress and anxiety. That is not the space of true giving.
Instead of stressing on finding the perfect gift to buy, we can focus on the true pleasure of generosity. This involves slowing down and becoming present. By being present, we can offer something that deepens our connection by giving with heartfelt energy.
While being present, we may realize that buying a present may not be the best way to convey our heartfelt feelings.
Heartfelt Personalized Gifts
Because we have unique talents and skills, we may want to offer our time and expertise through a gift. By teaching something, the learning is a gift that keeps on giving. The memories of sharing an experience are part of the lasting effect of teaching something.
We can share our passion in a gift, whether it is teaching to cook or bake something, to play or sing a song, or teach a physical activity like a sport or dancing. We can share how to take pictures or videos, to fish or swim, or even how to organize our clutter.
Once, in 2005, I taught a friend to bake chocolate chip cookies. Years later, in 2016, I got the gift back when she sent a message about that memory. That gift of learning was one thing that she remembered over the years.
Heartfelt Notes
If we want to keep it a little more simple, we can write a heartfelt note.
What we offer in the note can be appreciation and gratitude and love, showing that we care and they are cherished. It could even be in the form of a top ten list: the top ten reasons you love that person, or the top ten times they made you laugh.
One of my cherished notes is one written by my mother saying how much she loved me, and that I am truly a great daughter. In addition she said how proud she was of my accomplishments. This was written a month before she died.
Collect them in a jar
Another form these notes can take is a jar full of memories with our loved one.
We can write a brief description of a time for which we are grateful and makes us smile. It can be a time that makes us laugh. It can be a time that we shared a favorite activity. It can be a poignant conversation of realization or forgiveness.
All these memories can be written on slips of paper and put in a jar. Then the loved one can pull a slip from the jar and remember and smile with the feeling of love inside.
This is one that I would like to do, but have not done yet.
A similar idea is what a friend asked for her 50th birthday. She asked her friends to bring a single bead to her party. She then stung the beads in a necklace that she could wear to remember her friends.
As this bead was to represent ourselves, I decided to make the bead. Using a technique my sister taught me, I cut out a colorful bit of a photograph in a triangle, and rolled it with glue into a layered bead. It was colorful and fully represented me because I chose the paper, and made it.
More ideas?
Please share below how you share in this season of love. What are the heartfelt gifts that you have given? How did that show you care?
