Giving

It’s Christmas time and, once again, we are being encouraged to mindlessly spend our way out of the recession. Some of us experience anxiety trying to come up with meaningful gifts for a dozen or more people in just a month. There are people that manage to do it in three days! Some of us just get anxious at the thought of spending money we don’t have. What bothers me most is the amount of stuff we are being asked to buy that will likely be in the trash or lost in the back of a forlorn closet before another year goes by.
Let’s not encourage this sort of behavior. Our economy was shaped at a time when energy and resources were cheap and abundant. We invented things that we never imagined we would ever want much less need. The key was to keep the factories humming by utilizing cheap construction and planned obsolescence. Now we need larger houses and rentable storage units to store all of that stuff. At a time when our energy and resources need to be strategically and sparingly utilized, we are still pursuing this "consumption is good!" madness.
At a time of diminishing natural resources, the stuff we make and buy should be practical, useful, well made, and beautiful in some way. That means a lot fewer people will be employed in manufacturing, which I think is okay since most of those jobs are not in this country anyway and include abusive conditions and slave wages. That doesn’t mean we won’t be making things. Hopefully, we will all be cultivating our inner fabricator/inventor and be much the better for it. Many of us are already pretty adept at it as you can see from the many items that our friends and neighbors are selling at the various galleries around the island. If you have discretionary income and you simply must spend it during the Holidays, then at least give to your friends and neighbors and keep the money on the island. Most everything you find that is made here will incorporate most of the qualities I mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph.
We are stuck in this yearly concentrated gifting binge, and most of us really want to give to our family and friends. Many of us find this to be a dark time of the year in more ways than one. We may:
• Not have any spare cash,
• Not want to give something stupid just to fulfill the requirement,
• Not be able to afford the gift we would really like to give,
• Just not be able to think of something that a particular person might want, or
• Like to make something special for everybody but just don’t have the time or the confidence that you could make something worth giving.
If that describes your plight, believe me, I’m there with you! Here is how I see it:
• First of all, cut yourself some major slack.
• This "giving to everybody at the same time" thing is rigged.
• Giving does not have to involve spending money.
• You are the gift! Go out of your way to be a jolly force to be reckoned with wherever you go and do what you do best. Even if you are eating someone else’s hors d’oeuvres, your presence will be appreciated and no one will be wondering how and when you are going to reciprocate in kind. It is always much easier to give than it is to receive, so, you see, you are doing the hard part!
You may be a good cook, a musician, an accountant, or maybe you just dig great ditches. Promise to make something or do something that you do for each person. You don’t have to have it or do it now, better to spread it over the year. You may be able to teach somebody a little of what you do. That gives you quality time with that person and gives them a task done, a skill, or the start of one. You might just say to each: "You have three hours of my time during which I will do a task or share a skill sometime in the coming year."
If we all did that, we would begin rebuilding the rudiments of a real gift economy. The more moneyless exchanges we make, the less money we need, the more everybody has, and the closer we are to a really resilient, sharing community. Giving is really too good a thing to just reserve it for Christmas and birthdays.
Also, look for the initiation of the Vashon Community Timebank, a labor and resource sharing system that is being set up by Welcome Vashon. Another moneyless exchange system for us to use.
Comments?
terry@vashonloop.com