Chapter 6: Gloves Draft 1.0

Gloves

We wear gloves to protect our hands. We use our hands to do almost everything! Most of all, we use our hands to make transactions: to give, receive, pay, serve, offer and collect.

Your hands are so vital to everyday activities that you can just imagine how impaired your life would be if your hands were burnt or were injured. You wouldn’t be able to do a lot of things like you used to, or if you did, you’d do it with more difficulty than usual.

So in order to be the best you can be, you’ve got to make the choice to protect your hands. When we’re reaching into the oven to pull some cookies out, we need kitchen gloves to protect our hands from getting burnt. In the winter, we wear gloves to protect our hands from the cold, and keep us warm. Durian sellers wear gloves so that they won’t get pricked by durian thorns!!!

We actually don’t need to wear gloves all the time, but when temperatures get extreme and circumstances get thorny, it’s time to take out the gloves and protect those hands!

What do gloves represent?

In my wardrobe analogy, our hands represent giving and receiving. Gloves represent protecting ourselves when we are doing so. It’s important to give but we need to know when the right time to give is, and when we need to stop and start to receive as well.

In this chapter, I will be talking about the importance and benefits of giving wholeheartedly. However, I will also point out that its so important to know when you need too start receiving as well. If you don’t balance the giving with receiving, it will be like purchasing a one-sided glove! A balance needs to be struck so that your life can be fulfilling when you give and so you will not tire from helping others.

WHAT IS GIVING?

Before we can start tackling this concept, it is important to differentiate between short and long term giving. In short term giving, it is very straightforward. Give, and if you’re lucky, receive. If not, take it as a blessing on someone else’s life that otherwise would not have been touched.

Sometimes, I give and forget that I do not need to receive all the time. If I had given with the purpose of blessing someone else and not for the purpose of making myself feel like a “nice girl”, then I would not have gotten angry like the way I did one day.

It was the day I was feeling particularly charitable and saw this lady selling tissue and small knick knacks at her makeshift stall along the Orchard MRT walkway. In need for some tissue and at the same time in a charitable mood, I gave her $10 instead of the usual $1.

Now, what that old lady did next really ticked me off!

Without a word of thanks, she looked down and handed me one packet of tissue instead of the usual 3. When I asked for one more, she rolled her eyes at me, hissed an impatient “Ugh” and grudgingly gave me that packet of tissue.

Boy was I angry! How dare she return my generous act with an “ugh” and a single packet of tissue! The nerve of her.

Instead of displaying true generosity and living by my values, I went away feeling angry and cheated that I was not even given a sign of appreciation in return.

Did I have to feel that way? No. Could I have ignored her and not let her affect me? Yes.

It is a blessing to give, so give unconditionally.

When we stop giving unconditionally and start looking for returns, we are not truly remembering all the things we have been blessed with, and the things that have enabled us to pass the blessings on. We become more self-centered, and less concerned with others. When we stop giving, we stop allowing ourselves to be vulnerable to others and hinder our desire to continue giving and blessing.

Now, let us move on to the more long term types of giving. Long term giving is applicable to family and close friends who you spend a lot of time with.

I know a friend who was stuck with an insecure, unconfident and needy friend. The friendship started out well because the 2 girls shared common interests, tastes, and activities. Unfortunately, as the 2 girls grew more comfortable with one another, one of them started showing her real colors, voicing out displeasure when her friend talked to someone else for too long, or didn’t follow her down for breaks. The girl would talk behind her friends back and put her down because she felt that the other was more popular than her. My friend, being a naturally self-sacrificial individual, stuck by her side and continued to give in to her whims and fancies. She would only hang out with her, stop talking to her other friends, and take it when she found out from others that she was being bad mouthed. She thought that if she had kept on being a good friend, things would change.

Until one day, she decided that she had had enough.

She couldn’t take it anymore so when junior college ended, she decided to sever all ties with that friend and stopped meeting her. Thank goodness she did! That friendship only served to drain her, make her unhappy and pull her down. You should’ve seen how that friendship turned a happy girl into a depressed one. I’m glad she managed to get out.

Giving to those around us can be a tricky thing. How do we know when to stop?

We should stop if that friendship is not giving us enough to encourage us as individuals. If all the friendship does is to take and take and drain and drain, then it’s time you either have a talk with that friend, or get out of the friendship.

When we teach our daughters to give, we need to remember that it needs to be coupled with the ability and humility to receive.

My dad once told me this story of a baker who baked for confectionaries and restaurants, but never fed himself. He was always hungry even though he was the source of all the bread! This taught me the lesson that when you give, you also have to receive.

Likewise, some of us can’t stop giving, we serve others with time and effort, offer our help, but at the end of the day we end up really drained of energy, and all the more so when it is not appreciated. We give so much that we can’t receive and without realizing it. What I’ve learnt after all these years is that if you don’t receive you may also rob people of the joy of giving.

I’ve learnt that when you choose not to receive, you are also choosing not to let a relationship grow.

Often times, you have to receive in order to be fueled on to continue give. Receiving isn’t just about other people giving you things, it also means acknowledging their gifts, and appreciating those gifts. It’s only when you are appreciative of all the things you have, that you realize how loved and blessed you are, and that fills up your capacity to give.