Yesterday morning I walked into Peets after having stayed up all night at work coding. I was pretty shot and my hair was standing on end. I was staring at a cinnamon bun in the glass case and the the guy in front of me was paying. He looked at me and without hesitation and for no apparent reasons, said:
“You getting a refill? here …” and turning to the barista: “l’d like to pay for his refill”.
Confused, I said thank you and and Barista said under her breath “Tis the season.” He closed up his wallet, winked at me and touched my shoulder above the elbow. He said “it’s always the season.”
I recently read this on Ran Preiur’s site:
When I said that “paying back” is part of money economy thinking and doesn’t really apply to a gift economy, I didn’t go far enough. Another frame that we take for granted is that it’s more desirable to receive than to give. When we have to be told “It’s better to give than receive,” that means that the opposite belief is embedded in our culture: Whenever something is given, we imagine that the receiver is being helped and feeling good, while the giver is being hurt or drained. But really we often feel more pleasure and satisfaction from giving than from getting.
This reminds me of two things:
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I remember back on Halloween, when the stock market was starting to wobble, I thought that it would be funny to make a new holiday where people could take their kids around to their neighbor houses near dusk and ask for things they needed. Part scavenger hunt / part redistribution of goods that weren’t otherwise being used.
Yesterday, as you can see from the previous post, my coworker brought me a DODGE shield he found on the ground. Today he brought me some ice cream – a local variety. It just so happened that late at night while I was coding like a maniac, Amber had brought me some of the same local ice cream.
Which takes me back this:
When I was in first grade, my family visited England and Ireland. I remember sitting on a bench in a city area and I think I was waiting for one of our group to finish shopping. An old woman sat next to me and talked to me a bit – it’s really a shame I can’t remember what it was about – and when she got up to go she pulled out my hand and put a coin in it. Later that day … (and literally, the weird part of this that I honestly hadn’t put together until typing this out) … later that same day and man rode by on a bicycle and slowed down next to us. He said “here, buy you son some ice-cream” and handed my mom a coin of some kind. So weird. Seriously, this happened. And both times I honestly don’t remember doing anything that might prompt someone to give – I wasn’t being noticeably sweet or crying or whining or anything. That’s what made it so peculiar.
Anyway, Tim told me that I need to get a big gift bag like Santa and start distributing items to people. I think that’s my next step in my ‘journey’, if you will. In fact, it ties together nicely with the most important part of the first Lord of the Rings movie for me (which I saw for this first time this Thanksgiving). For some reason, I felt emotionally connected to the scene in which the Elf Queen gave each member of the fellowship a gift to take on their travels. If you don’t know what I am talking about, she gives Sam some hemp rope and he is visibly upset that he didn’t get a cool dagger like the others. The implication (at least what I imagine is being foreshadowed), is that he has no idea how important the thing is that
he has just received.
The rope was like the Heart ring in Captain Planet.
Pretty obviously the lamest one, but they try to tell the kid “This is the most powerful of all!”
You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about Ran’s quote about how in a gift economy that you don’t have to pay people back… Based on the research I’ve done on historical cultures with an extremely strong hospitality tradition, it seems like he’s pretty much totally wrong. In Bedouin and Arab culture, the gifts and hospitality given are done so with an explicit expectation of reciprocity. I’ve read that it’s not uncommon to be blatantly asked by a receiver how much the gift you’re giving them cost you – because they want to buy you something of equal value in exchange. I think this also has to do with the Muslim tradition of dying with no debts on earth…
The thing with traditional hospitality and reciprocity is that you may never pay back the person or people who offer you gifts and kindness, but you’re expected essentially to pay it back into the community pool. You pay back your hosts by being a gracious and charitable host to others…
Nevermind that in the Northwest Potlach culture, families would go so far out of their way to give gifts and make a show of hospitality that they would bankrupt themselves…
Hi, saw your comment on tmbchr about giving/receiving. Just wanted to send this your way, as it was something that caught my eye earlier today:
http://www.physorg.com/news148707528.html