What is the greatest gift you have given?

in #questionoftheweek7 years ago (edited)

What is the greatest gift you have given?

I’ve been fortunate enough in my life to give and receive an uncountable number of gifts. This has often put me to think over the tradition and philosophy of gifting itself. Of late, I’ve become a little reluctant to participate in the gift culture. This led me to my own understandings and definition of gift. My experience has taught me to value only intangible gifts. Even if I receive or give a material gift, I only look for the underlying intangible exchange which it creates in the process of gifting.

Rating a gift as “greatest” is a daunting task for me. I adore all gifts with equal love. IMHO, it’s only the receiver of the gift who can tell if he or she has received any gift or not. Giver’s claim of gifting something is totally insignificant.

This post has led me to recall some of the gifts I think I gave, which led me to understand and value gifts better:

A Random Gift


Once I was eating some fruits while seated on a bench in a public place, I noticed a poor beggar looking at me temptingly. I called him near me and requested if he would want to eat some with me. He was so shy of my offer, he couldn’t utter anything. I gestured him to sit beside me. He hesitantly sat on the farthest end of the bench. I offered him some fruits, which we ate together in silence. After finishing when I got up, he still couldn’t speak anything but I could see tears of gratitude in his eyes. He bowed down and touched my feet and began to cry. Such genuine gestures of gratitude are hard to come by on a daily basis. It makes our day and even justifies our own existence.

Life is a precious gift


Back in my school days, one of my friends was in extreme depression and had suicidal tendencies. I brought him to my home in the hope that I along with a few other friends will motivate him to hang on to this life. But unfortunately, I couldn’t help him. He spent only a few hours with me and left my home on some pretext and in the middle of that deadly cold winter night he dived into deep waters of a lake to never come back. His last casual question to me, which probably remained unanswered, was “Why should I live? What’s life for?”

I had contemplated on this question a number of times after this incident. I realized that life in itself is the most precious gift we ever received and we need to learn to adore it first. We don’t need any reason to survive. It’s even worth to spend all our life in search of answer to just that one question, “What’s life for?”. Why should we expect answers from others which we can find ourselves? It has taught me to give more respect and importance to all life on the planet.

This incident motivated me to gift a huge sum of money to a few of my friends who were in depression or had suicidal tendencies because of financial problems at some stage of their lives. Helping to put their lives back on track was relieving to all of their family members as well as me. Putting back those lost smiles back on a family gave me immense happiness and peace from within.

Free Life is a gift worth giving & living



I also stood as surety for some of remotely acquainted people to me, who were imprisoned for no good reason at all. You can read one of these stories here . So I not only revered life, but a free life as a gift, which I wanted to offer to one and all. Once out of prison, when they shared their feelings of getting their freedom back with me, for which they have almost lost their hopes, with their eyes filled with tears of joy and a loving tight hug, I felt elated and excited for them.

All life forms are invaluable



Source: Freedom For Animals

Going a little further, I realized that it’s not just humans that crave to live a free and happy life but all sentient beings on this planet want to survive and they put their best to their own struggle for life. This got me turn vegan and I started spreading the philosophy of co-existence & non-violence. Last year, I took a thousand mile journey on foot to touch over one hundred thousand lives with this message of compassion. Even if one person changed and adopted a life of compassion, I was thrilled to see that hundreds of lives are being saved by just this little action. This kept me moving on and on. Sometimes we even get a feedback or a credit (like in this post today) at other times we don’t even know what happened later on. In most of the above examples, I ain’t in touch with anyone of them. Even if we remain in touch, we never recall those incidents to claim a credit or something.

I don't believe in material gifts. Value of gift is not in the material being exchanged but the intangibles being exchanged on its pretext. I don’t believe a gift should create any sort of obligation. It is not a one way trade that a gift-giver should be entitled of some credit or a receiver of the gift should be obliged to his/her giver. If it is so, it’s not a gift, it is a donation. A gift is a two-way transaction where both parties get the benefit instantly. Otherwise the transaction of gift is not complete. Whenever I give a gift, I receive a gift in return. If I make someone happy, that happiness makes me happier. That’s what the transaction of gift is about. Nothing remains due in it. If it creates some obligation then you are not gifting but you are giving some mental burden, a type of harassment in return of some material thing.

So it’s really hard to figure out whether I 'gave' a gift or 'received' a gift. I’d rather say that the greatest gift I ever gave is to myself. Whenever I gift anything, I gift it to myself. All the above gifts I described were actually gifts to myself. They made me feel worthy of my existence, made me happy, gave me joy, peace, a meaning to my life. I’ve never given anything, I’ve always received a lot!


Do leave your feedback, reactions and criticism in the comments below. I love positive interactions with you. If you just upvote my post, I do feel happy. But I'd be happier if you leave a comment too.

I sometimes send a small gift of 101 cents to 999 cents to one of the comments here depending upon my mood and account liquidity level. Hope you won't mind a small tip if sending that makes me happy.

If you are on Telegram, you may want to interact with my bot Veganizer or the Hindi version गौमाता कामधेनु. Do subscribe my Telegram Supergroup for chat related to veganism. Thank you for reading! 💓

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Wow this entire post is awesome and as @icmultitudes said there is much to contemplate. But this stood out the most to me...

"Last year, I took a thousand mile journey on foot to touch over one hundred thousand lives with this message of compassion. Even if one person changed and adopted a life of compassion, I was thrilled to see that hundreds of lives are being saved by just this little action. "

Very admirable and I would love to hear more about this! Your posts are so inspirational. Thank you!

Thanks a lot @kbvictor for your attention to my post and such an awesome feedback. Regarding my journey, I had tried to give a daily update on my facebook page here. Thanks a lot for your interest! 💓

I will check it out! I have been curious recently if the vegan community/population is on the rise in India. I have noticed a lot of new indian restaurants showing up here in the U.S. (especially Los Angeles area) offering mostly all vegan dishes! It makes me very excited to see and know that I can go to an indian restaurant without worrying about dairy.

WOW, that's a very positive development in LA. I think vegan community is on the rise throughout the world. With the increase in awareness, people are rising up for the cause. Most people are good at heart but the problem is world is not very aware of this issue.

In India too, new vegan restaurants and ventures are coming up on a regular basis but their numbers are still less to make any visibility to the general public. I hope, with increase in activism, it will change for better soon.

Thanks a lot for your interest in Indian scenario. May I request you to sign a petition linked in my previous post to help some aquatic creatures?

Yes absolutely! Signed. Good luck!!!

Lots to contemplate in this wise post!

Actually, you are wise to discover things worth contemplating everywhere 😊
I'm glad you found something worthy here. Would love to post a small tip! here.

oh wow.. such a lovely post! its a shame you missed the actual competition,.. but this is really special..

THANK YOU for sharing it!

Thank you @eco-alex for liking it! Well, regarding actual competition I had already missed the bus as I learned about it from a follow-up post from you which didn't had any deadline mentioned in it. So I assumed it should be on for at least 7 days (as it's a question of the week) from that post. But thank you for visiting this one even when I posted it so late!

ahhhh! i seee. .sorry about that.. ill make it more obvious next time! thanks for letting me know..!

I hope you join us next time! in time ;-)

fantastic post thank you very inspiring.

Nice to read this great article.

Thank you for stopping by @piyushkansal!

stopping means, for what?

Sorry, it's just an idiom I use it habitually. Read more about it here

This gem of a post was discovered by the OCD Team!

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Would be my pleasure. Thanks a lot for your kindness! 💓

Thank you @jeanpi1908 for all your efforts to curate such an amazing list!
I've included most of those posts in my crossword contest which is currently in progress. Hopefully it will give much more exposure to all those entries.

You are welcome

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