The Gratitude Of and From Giving
Tangible or intangible, giving powers positivity.
About every 6 months or so, my wife and I purge our space.
I come from a long line of pack rats. Not hoarders, nobody lives in piles of utterly useless junk. Pack rats. Both sides of my immediate family – my mom and stepdad and my dad and stepmom – have a lot of stuff.
Some, of course, is useful stuff. Other stuff, however, is either sentimental, valuable but not useful, or a showcase of affluence. I write this with no judgment, simply a statement of fact.
Given these examples, I have a lot of stuff. Some is useful or at least semi-useful. Clothes, books, art, camping gear, and other stuff. There’s also a lot of stuff that’s not so useful. Tchoztkes, boxes of classic Star Wars and other sci-fi toys, medieval garb worn only once a year, and random items I’ve held onto for sentimental reasons – or, more often, because I’ve forgotten I have them.
When my wife and I go through our stuff to perform a purge, we gather everything together and create a decent-sized pile of bags, boxes, and larger items. However, rather than throw these things out, we donate them.
There are charities and so-called charities we will not give anything to. I’m looking at you, Goodwill and the Salvation Army, for example. Usually, we give our purged items to a veteran’s charity.
At the completion of this task, our home feels cleaner and less cluttered. More than that, there’s a sense of peace and overall goodness that comes with giving.
This is part of why the gratitude of and from giving is so powerful and empowering.
The tangibles
Over the years, I’ve come to better recognize my privilege. I know full well that I have it pretty good. No matter how bad things might get, there are fallbacks among friends and family. I’m extremely grateful for this and the privilege that comes with it.
While I’ve struggled at times to earn a decent living, I’ve been incredibly fortunate. Thus, I still strive to be giving when I’m able.
Before long, I find there’s stuff I’ve held onto that I didn’t need anymore. Clothes, for example. Perfectly good gear, but items that no longer fit tend to occupy drawers and closet space. This includes stuff that fit when I weighed less, and hold onto until that occurs again. This, however, gets to be a bit much. Hence, when I participate in the active purge of stuff, I finally get rid of these items.
Similarly, I live outside of Philadelphia. At a couple of points in the city, there tend to be homeless people gathered. Anytime I can, I will give them food and sometimes blankets or the like.
Then there’s money. Giving to worthy causes, friends in need, and the like, makes me feel good. I’m incredibly grateful for being able to give when I can. The main reason I desire to earn more money is to be able to be able to give more.
As I’ve gotten older and studied mindfulness, Buddhism, and the interconnectedness of all, my desire for tangibles has decreased. Giving what I have that no longer serves me or brings me contentment or joy is incredibly worthwhile.
As much as there is to give from the tangibles, the intangibles include vastly more.
Giving the intangibles
When it comes to the material, tangible things in the world, they’re in abundance. All messages of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency are false. All you need to do to see this for yourself is look at how much profit oil companies, retailers, electronic manufacturers, and the like are making.
Remember that profit is money earned beyond operating costs. This means if product “A” costs $10 to make (parts, labor, and the like), and is sold for $20, they make $10 for each item sold. Ever notice how veritably everyone selling something that’s in a “limited supply” is making obscene profits? Abundance.
However, as abundant as the material and tangible is, the intangibles are far more abundant. The reality is, most of what you desire is intangible and immaterial. Tangible items you buy largely invoke intangible feelings and senses.
You buy the Acura over the Honda to show you’re affluence, which then makes you feel important, powerful, and like you’ve achieved something. Maybe that’s true, but it’s less about which car you bought and more about how it made you feel. Then, it sucks when the feeling is fleeting and/or accompanied by needing more, bigger, increasingly impressive things, and the like.
What people want and desire most are intangibles. For the most part, this comes down to kindness, compassion, empathy, caring, love, and joy. Giving these to others comes with zero cost and very little effort.
I can give kindness, compassion, empathy, caring, love, and joy without having to spend any money or be anyone other than myself. Even better, giving these intangibles tends to draw them back to me. That’s empowering both given and received and creates a positivity feedback loop.
The well of intangible, immaterial things is endless and abundant.
Mindfulness reveals this truth
When you practice being actively consciously aware, here and now, you’re being mindful. Mindfulness tells you who, what, where, how, and why you are. From that place, you can see what you have, and if it serves you or not.
More than that, you can recognize the incredible abundance of intangibles. This begins by being in the now, fully present in the moment, and knowing what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, the positivity or negativity of your approach, and what actions you do or don’t take from there.
If you’re reading these words, you have at least a degree of privilege. The device you’re reading this on is the proof of that. You can be grateful for this truth, and from there draw more positivity and things to be grateful for.
Genuine positivity – unlike toxic positivity – recognizes negativity. It also recognizes how necessary negativity is to any given narrative. Shit happens, life deals bad hands to everyone from time to time, and you’re challenged by things along the way. Despite that, you always have kindness, compassion, empathy, caring, love, and joy available. They might seem somewhat out of reach at times, but they’re always there and always abundant.
One of the best ways to draw them to you is to give them to others. Gratitude and giving from a place of thankfulness is a two-way street. You give and receive empowerment from the act, whether you’re giving a tangible or intangible.
One important caveat here. Giving with gratitude is very different from sacrificing. Sacrificing is not an act of gratitude, because it comes with an expectation of suffering. In the abundant universe you and I live in, sacrificing is not truly necessary, and it’s also unnecessarily disempowering. Mindfulness will show this to be true.
Recognizing the gratitude of and from giving isn’t hard
It’s all about practicing mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and approach to direct your actions.
When you recognize and acknowledge it feels good to give, whether that’s material/tangible or immaterial/intangible, you can see how giving is a part of gratitude and generates positivity. Knowing that giving feels good is something positive that you’re worthy and deserving of, you can employ this to give more, especially the incredibly abundant intangibles – like kindness, compassion, empathy, caring, love, and joy – to improve your life experience for the better.
This empowers you, and your empowerment can empower others around you.
Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way that opens more dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can explore and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
The better aware you are of yourself in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can spread to those around you to their empowerment.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the five-hundred and thirty-third (533) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
Please visit here to explore all my published works – both fiction and non-fiction.
Follow me here!
