Let’s only give what we are truly prepared to

To be read whilst listening to “Marlene on the Wall” by Suzanne Vega. [Warning: strange post coming] A few years ago, during a work event, I took a group of colleagues to my favourite restaurant in the world, possibly my favourite place in the world. It is a restaurant on top of a mountain one hour west of Tokyo. Each table is a little samurai house. Streams run through the property, filled with koi. Food is cooked at your table by staff dressed in traditional Japanese clothes, over a raked sand pit that looks like a zen garden. If you arrive at dusk, you can see them lighting torches and watch the sunset over the mountain. We had a very nice dinner, and everyone said they enjoyed it. But as I sat there, I became unexpectedly engulfed with a very specific, sad feeling. I realized that none of these colleagues had ever, or would ever probably, do anything remotely similar with me. I was ashamed of having those thoughts/ feelings. It wasn’t like I was taking them there as a transaction, expecting anything in return. And what I was doing for these colleagues might not even mean that much to them. Indeed, they may have felt they were indulging me. Yet nevertheless that feeling came up. It reminded me of a feeling I have had multiple times – doing something nice for someone, such as mentoring, giving ideas/ content without attribution etc., not expecting anything in return, then later feeling sad because I felt like a bit of a jerk for opening up my soul to others who didn’t feel or behave the same way. It reminded me of the line in the beautiful song ‘Marlene on the Wall’ by Suzanne Vega: “’Don’t give away the goods too soon’ is what she might have told me”. It also reminded me, somewhat adjacently, of the humorous quote from comedian Louis CK after he was guilty of a metoo incident. He said “It’s at times like these that you find out who your real friends are…and it is never the ones you want it to be.” For me the general lesson is, before giving something, we need to make sure in our heart of hearts that we don’t need or expect anything in return. Ever. Or if we do, we make those expectations clear in advance. At the very least to ourselves. It seems almost analogous to only buying products that you can truly afford, or only gambling with money that you can truly afford to lose. #strangesunday #unthink #unask #unlearn