The Art of Giving

The art of giving is one of the most important form of art in the world today. This is my personal opinion, but then, this is my personal blogspot! The reason why I feel that the art of giving is so important is because I feel this is the only way you get richer by making someone else better off. Being a student of Economics (though I have almost forgotten that I was), I was always taught that supply is finite and demand is infinite. And the act of balancing infinite demand vis-a-vis finite supply is what Economics is all about. Digging this subject for 7 years, I had realized that this is a fact of life, not only Economics. Life is a balancing act that you learn at the very beginning. And it is always about demand and supply... your demand for milk is supplied by your mother when you are born and thats when it begins. You demand pocket money, your father supplies, your father demands good result that you supply. Its a trade off...and it continues from childhood to adolescence, till the day you are alive...and this trade off is in every aspect of life...social, financial as well as emotional. And in this trade off, if one part is better off the other one is invariably worse off, even if temporarily. But the art of giving is only one aspect of life when you are better off and the party you are giving is also better off...you both gain...he gets a better life, and you? Well my dear friend, you get a happiness that is priceless, atleast much over priced than what you have given.

Sarah had taught me the Art of Giving... and I have come across many such Sarahs in life who have taught me this. And this post is dedicated to all of them.

1) Often, for my office work, I have to travel to Bangalore, and there I have an office cab and the person who owns the cab, is Suresh. Suresh is a very nice man and over months we have bonded really well. Suresh has 2 daughters and since both of them are younger to my daughter, I often get my daughter's old clothes and other used stuffs for them. During one such week long visit in Bangalore, I was talking to my husband over the phone and was cribbing about the food in Bangalore that i didnt like having. Suresh might have understood what I was talking and the very next day he got me a lunch pack and told me that his wife will cook meals for me till the time I am there, so that I dont have to eat outside food.

2) My friend Rajdeep with whom I studied for 5 years together would always spend his pocket money buying me chocolates...and before you get wrong ideas, no, he is or never was my boy friend. We were friends and rgender never came between our friendship. So there was no need of impressing each other or anything. But his buying me chocolates from his pocket money, since I would have already spent mine buying chocolates for myself, by then, have left a deep sense of gratitude in me. Now, I can buy and have any type of chocolates in the world but nothing tastes as good as those Ra. 5/ Cadbury's Break bar.

3) Out of all gifts I receive on my birthday the best one is the one my daughter gives me. This is not because she is my daughter and/or I love her the most and all that. This is more because she gives me a gift that costs her entire pocket money for the month. And even then she looks forward to spending that amount just to make me feel special.

4) The year of my marriage, my father had gifted me an album which had all my childhood memories. Rare photographs that I had never seen earlier. My father is not very expressive kind, I dont remember when was the last time we hugged each other. So a gift like that from my father had me speechless.

All these people actually taught me a very valuable lesson of my life...that happiness lies more in giving than in getting...