© David Staume 2006

The philosophy and art of giving and receiving

Although we give in various ways every day of our lives, hardly anyone considers how best to give, the principles involved in giving, or – heaven forbid – that there may be an art of giving. But there is an art of giving, and there are laws that apply, laws that we can use, and when we use these laws well they can increase our capacity to give and make the experience of giving mutually beneficial.

The law that operates in respect of giving and receiving is Newton’s Third Law: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newton discovered this law in relation to bodies in motion, where the explosive power of a rocket’s engines is counterbalanced by the rocket’s forward thrust for example, but the principle he discovered could apply in all contexts. The principle of Newton's Third Law is that every force that we apply to our environment will be countered by a force of the same magnitude in the opposite direction. If we push, nature pushes back; if we pull, nature pulls back. It’s how nature balances herself.

When applied to the context of giving and receiving, the law means that whatever we give out we get back; that every product of will – whether it’s an action, an emotion, or a thought – will be returned to us. So every time we give we essentially create a gift for ourselves of the same kind and magnitude, somewhere in our future. Because giving means receiving, an extrapolated Newton's Third Law removes the distance between selflessness and abundance.

But before we give away everything we own, there are a few rules to the art of giving; and we should never just give things away willy-nilly.

The first rule is: We can only give what we’ve got. If we don’t have it, we can’t give it. Now it’s not difficult to see that I can only give you a box of chocolates if I actually have it in the first place, but since we're extrapolating with abandon, the statement also applies to abstract things – such as happiness. How, for example, can we expect to make someone happy (to give happiness) if we’re not happy ourselves? Or, to reverse the equation, how can we expect our partner to make us happy if they’re not happy themselves? They can’t give us something that they don’t have in the first place. And if you thought this principle was obvious, take a look at all the people in relationships with unhappy partners and you'll probably change your mind.

The second rule is: the more we receive, the more we have, and the more we have, the more we can give. The art of giving therefore requires us to be open to receive. To be able to give abundantly, we have to be receptive to the abundance that life throws our way. We often hear the expression ‘give and take’ as if these terms are opposites, but the opposites are really ‘give and receive’. Both giving and receiving are fantastic; it’s taking that’s the problem, because taking implies a selfish motive.

The third rule is: we should always accept what is given to us, and we should always receive it with gratitude. Nothing will shut off the tap of life that would otherwise shower us with opportunities more quickly or more tightly than ingratitude. ‘Ah, but what if the gift is tainted?’ you say. ‘Should a charity accept money from an arms dealer?’ Of course! Nothing can taint us if it only passes through us, on the way to a worthy recipient or a good outcome. It can only poison us if it remains in our system: that is, if it is used selfishly.

The fourth rule is: We should never give away all our principal; because if we give away our principal we will have nothing left to give; we will have given away our capacity to earn interest, and our giving will be unsustainable. Now while that’s obviously good advice in relation to money, it’s also true in such things as matters of the heart. We can give our love, all of it, always, but we should never give away our heart, because it’s too precious. If we give our heart to someone and they break it, we will be devastated, because we have given away more than just our love; we have given away a part of our self – we have given away our principal. There should always be some distance between ourselves and the one we love.

These four rules make giving sustainable and mutually rewarding.

It’s all neatly summed up in the poem:

Give without receiving and you’ll dry up like a prune

Receive without giving and you’ll burst like a balloon.

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