Sometimes a blog is a real gift — such as today’s dispatch from Seth Godin.  It’s about the power of gift giving. I’ve long had a respect for the act of giving and receiving gifts, so I thought it worth reviewing right here on ‘The Meaning of Life Blog’.

Godin points out that when a gift is ‘freely given and gladly received’, an imbalance is created. In the resolving of the imbalance, a chain reaction of goodwill is started. The chain creates all-important human connections. Godin suggests that a healthy community is one that’s infused with this kind of selflessness. The gift also has a selfish aspect to it, of course, since it feels so good to give.

Feeling good and selflessness would appear to be contradictory, but they’re not, are they? Whatever helps us to detach from an excessively self-centred worldview is going to feel liberating. We’ve all had altruistic experiences that prove this without a doubt.

Then, why does it feel so awkward to give freely and often?

In a materialistic society, letting go of things that we’ve worked hard to acquire seems, on the surface, absurd. Our identities are built around the things we’ve acquired – from iPhones to our powerful egos. Yet, who will deny that wellbeing is a by-product of releasing our grip, be it physical or psychic. It’s like a law of nature. Truly religious people have been trying to make this point since the dawn of time.

“Surrender, yield, renounce,” they say. We should try to be less of who we’ve been trained to think we are. Let go and fall upwards.

Give.