The First Gift

I started a new business today. It's a business of gift-giving. They're called Gift Headbands. I crochet headbands and offer them as a small gift to the world. If you want one, you can have one. You can also offer a payment, out of gratitude, for the gift. It's a small gesture, a tiny experiment, a glorious undertaking. I gave the first headband as a gift today to my housemate, Sarah. I had been collecting the headbands. I made four and was preparing to bring them down to a shop in town to sell them on consignment (as gifts, nonetheless - someone can choose to pay nothing for them and I am happy to have given a gift). The first giving, to Sarah, was highly rewarding. After hoarding four of them, saving them and beginning to prepare tags, I read Charles Eisenstein's section of his book (The Ascent of Humanity) called The Spirit of the Gift. There, I was reminded that a gift kept for too long becomes stagnant, a curse. The headbands had, in fact, begun to feel heavy and almost like a burden. Would anyone buy them? I thought. Was I wasting my time? I wondered. I had forgotten the spirit of the gift. I had forgotten that a fresh loaf of bread given as a gift today is far better than a stale piece of toast next week. I had neglected to honor the great gift of life. As Einsenstein puts it, "Life itself—our human lives—is a gift. Our lives, our talents, our abilities, our privilege to be human are given to us, and like all gifts they are not to be hoarded." May our science, our industry, our every day inspiration be born from the awareness of the gift and the longing to contribute to the beauty of our world.