Giving & Taking: One cannot exist without the other but there are nuances

      “It is better to give than to receive”. English, even more than many other languages, has shades of meaning according to the exact word used. The word “receive” is passive. Something arrives and you passively receive it. There is no action upon the receiver’s part except to act as a receptacle.

“I received a package in the mail”.

     In the first paragraph, “giving” is an active verb. You are deliberately choosing to remove something in your possession and place it into the possession of someone else or in some other place. You are using an active “give” and a passive “receive”. It is also possible to be an unwilling, passive, person/location that has something available to be used/possessed by someone else or another place. In this case, it is best to use the passive verb “possess”. Possessor A transfers X to possessor B.

“They took what they wanted”.

     “Don’t be a taker”. In this case, “take” is very active. You are removing something from someone, or some place, and taking possession of it. Whether it wants to be possessed by you is of no consequence. Only in the case of an active giver is everything voluntary.

     Confused yet? People get confused and they use the wrong terms all the time. We say that being a taker is bad and a giver is good. But it really depends on the other end of the transition.

• If both are passive, no transaction occurs.

• If one is active and the other passive then the transaction may be unwilling and, most of the time, the morality of a society says that an unwilling transaction is bad. (There are those, of course, that say “might makes right” — if you CAN take then it is all right for you to take. In general, people will SAY that forcing something upon (“giving to”) a person is not proper but may accept the act. If you CAN give but the other doesn’t want it then it indicates a certain amount of hubris.)

• If both are active, it is assumed that it is a willing transaction.

     The above is complicated enough, isn’t it? But we haven’t gone into the situation of an active end and an active refusal. I try to give you something (active) but you refuse to accept it (active refusal). I try to take something from you (active) and you refuse to let it go (active refusal). These situations are conflict cases — conflict of desire — and they are often the basis of wars, vendettas, grudges, and resentments.

     There are more exact replacements, or synonyms of the various verbs within a given situation.

     Taking from someone without their permission (active or passive resistance) is theft.

     Giving to someone without their desire to have it can be called charity or it can be called hubris.

     Adages must be applied carefully. Sometimes it is NOT better to give than to receive.

Ideas & Interpretations is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Simple does not mean Easy

 

     "Pay attention", "Love your neighbor as you do yourself", "Don't stress out over the little things", "forget what hurt you but never forget what it taught you". "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Such wonderful adages. There are business segments that have a primary product of manufacturing posters, plaques, and other items to spread these adages (and proverbs) far and wide. We can read them and say "of course, that is obvious". But, if one examines society and talk among ourselves, we find that even though the adages may be very easy to state -- and, perhaps, understand -- they are not put into action very often.

     "Love your neighbor as you do yourself." One of the difficulties in putting adages into action is that we are so awfully good at taking them apart and reducing them to small edge conditions. "Love your neighbor". Who is our neighbor? Are our neighbors the people who live next door with whom we have never spoken -- or are they people within our common religious community who are neighbors of spirit even if they live in a different city? Are they people that look like us, pray like us, have the same amount of spendable income as we do?

     Or are they everyone? In that case, it can lead to a more active separation of people -- leading some people to say that only this set of people are really people and the others are not really people. One of the first actions taken by any group wanting to initiate hostilities towards, or take advantage of, another group is to start emphasizing differences and start to separate them from the "correct" pool of people.

     "Don't stress out over the little things." What is a little thing? It surely varies between people -- one person's "little" thing may be another person's "big" thing. Or, if looked at from the view point of someone examining our lives from the vantage of Alpha Centauri, maybe everything we do is a little thing? But such an evaluation must surely be from a subjective, personal, viewpoint. And is it stress that will keep us actively working with the "thing" -- or is it stress that will cause us to neglect other "things" and negatively affect our health?

     "Pay attention". Oh boy! Sure, we want to pay attention but it is physically, and neurologically, impossible to pay attention to everything. When someone says "pay attention" they usually are saying "pay attention to me" or "pay attention to the thing I have assigned you to do". But those don't make good adages.

     "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". OK. Sounds reasonable. But, it is similar to someone giving you directions such as "turn left a street before you see a white church on the right". Unless you are aware of the situation for which you can enact the prevention, there really isn't much to be done. Sometimes you may be aware but, in that case, what you are really doing is preparation -- not prevention.

     Perhaps you have a favorite adage that sounds great, you'd love to follow it, but it just doesn't seem to happen? Or you have one that is not only simple to say and remember but also easy to follow?

     Personally, I work with a line from an old Christmas movie ("Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"). "Just put one foot in front of the other and soon you'll be walking out the door." Sure hope I am pointing towards the door as it will be a lot harder walking through the wall.