Learn From It

I grew up in a house, in a family, in a Home where there were very few boundaries place on generosity, on kindness, on decency. This applied not only to those who lived in the house, but to anyone each of us might encounter: if there was something you could offer, something you could do for another that didn't jeopardize your own safety, health or well-being, then why shouldn't you offer something? As the Catholics were fond of saying, real giving is giving of your substance and not just your abundance, so giving of your own material or emotional abundance should be a no-brainer, right?

My once-a-month therapy (think of it as verbal blogging at this point) with Ronald regularly swings around to what he calls my “general sense of abundance about the world.” He coined the phrase “sense of abundance” quite some time ago, and the more I hear it, the more I use it. The more I use it, the mo' better it seems to fit my world view.

This whole no-boundaries thing, however, puts a great deal of faith in—and a great deal of responsibility on—the recipients of generosity, of good will. Faith on my part that their acceptance of generosity is according to need and comes with great hesitation and appreciation, not because I expect to be appreciated (because then it's just a barter), but because it's how I would be as the receiver of gifts. Knowing I was receiving something without deservedness would make me appreciate it all the more, take only what was absolutely needed, and plan to return the favor to that person or to someone just as a means of perpetuating an environment of good will. In short, having not deserved yet nonetheless received a gift, I would make the effort to be deserving of it as soon as I could.

Now, lately, I've come to realize in a real and very concrete way that not everyone shares that mentality. For some, there's a strong sense of entitlement: take the Christians these days, for example, who expect that their religion takes a place of honor and undeniability in the public forum. Sometimes others just haven't had a similarly idyllic environment in which to learn such stuff, who think that generosity is some zero-sum game where if someone else gets something, that's less stuff available for you.

The latter notion is, admittedly, completely alien to me in the milieu of good will. Time, I can see..spending time with one person does take away from the available time to spend with another. Sex, I can see as well, because mood and urge are spent in the act.

As for love? Well, Muriel Grable, the mother of George Grable, who was Allen's partner before I was Allen's partner, called me often after Allen's death—and often while he was still alive—and would assure me that “one love doesn't take from another”. She meant, of course, that just because Allen could find love with me after George died, that it didn't mean that Allen loved George any less. And on top of that, she loved Allen as her own son, and his happiness in life was more important than honoring some outmoded notion of respect of the dead.

But then again, she was speaking historically, serially. I'm certain she would not have been so abiding and generous had Allen taken up with me while George was still alive and Allen was still in that relationship.

Other things, like security and stability and a sense of Home, to me as an adult, are singletons; exclusivity is required for some things, sometimes by definition.

So...for some, it's entitlement. For others, it's a different emotional model when growing up. For others, perhaps a general immaturity is the basis. Something like, “hey, it's free! why not take it!” or “it's not stealing if you don't get caught” and thought ends just so, just there.

Whatever the case—or combination of cases—I am reminded of a story about, strangely, dog-training. A woman owned a dog who would bark every time the mailman came up to the house to drop off the mail. Every time the dog would bark, the woman would yell and punish the dog for doing so. She could not figure out why her 'teaching' was not effective, why the training never took. Then someone suggested something to her: be the dog. Meaning, see the situation from the dog's point of view: he barks and barks and then the mailman goes away. That's it! None of her yelling or training even figured in the face of the effectiveness—as the dog saw it—of the dog's barking.

So perhaps instead of wondering why there's little opportunity for me to be generous because those upon whom I would bestow feel entitled or feel needy and/or are simply immature and so just just expect from me, perhaps I should be the dog.

Perhaps I should look at the world from someone else's perspective and tone down my solipsistic tendencies just a bit. Maybe that's how one develops appropriate boundaries later in life without losing one's own sense of goodness and abundance in humanity. Maybe local limits don't have to imply universal qualities. Maybe I should take my own advice and tune my self-fulfillment to something a lot less indirect.

Maybe I should just acknowledge that right now, I don't actually possess at the moment the abundance that I'm used to sharing.

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