Contents page 1 — The pack luck page 2 — The path of the experience page 3 — paths of knowledge In a page
read A’s birthday is Christmas, a wedding, a friendly evening invitation and every year:. The head rattles: What should I give? What is useful, what is appropriate? A question many only secretly, because she has something naughty: Wouldn’t life be much easier if we gave nothing? Why does the man ever gifts?
“Because he needs to,” says the sociologist Holger Schwaiger dry. This is kind of unsatisfactory. In fact, the science can’t yet explain, like the Ritual of gift giving came into the world. Anthropologists, philosophers, historians, and sociologists have tried to answer. All in all, in vain.
The Giving of people busy for millennia. On the front it again: Aristotle. He wrote in his Nicomachean ethics, the art is “in the right place, to the right extent, at the right time” is a gift. Oh, my dear Aristotle. If it were that simple!
to find The right balance today seems harder than ever. In the USA alone, the value of gifts that the recipient can’t forward it adds up to 16 billion dollars per year. Discount days such as Black Friday in late November to heat the shop. And thanks to the Design boom of the past 20 years, all of today’s practical Life in refined Aesthetics once again to give away. Amazing lamps, refined candle holder, artistic dishes, and the infamous “control-hinchen and dust-einchen” for a tiny moment of funny – is that really necessary?
on the Other hand, The shining eyes of a child, the unadulterated joy of a friend over a nice gift are a wonderful experience that nobody would want to miss. A world without gifts would be practical, but infinitely more sober. But how can we make the Need to a Want? That the giver has the feeling to have no Ritual, but a path to the recipient is found, the both have in common?
the path of The desires
In conversations with friends quickly turns out: The king’s discipline of giving is to find something that the other wants. Because such a gift is visible, that you think the other people really, that you have him or her listen carefully.
As children my siblings and I thrilled wish list written when the Christmas was approaching. The parents know already, what we wanted, because we had warm in the course of the year. This constant attention is an art, which many of us are becoming heavier. Not from lack of thought – we are just day-in, day-out, so that we could look at the other, secretly, on the shoulder.
This Text comes from the TIME magazine 1/19 KNOW. The current issue you can buy on newsstands or here.
We could consult with common friends: Did you hear something? But often enough also, you know nothing to say. We could Facebook or Instagram to implicit Wish scour. We could reflect, but also to the direct conversation.
The art of conversation is not to say, who you be self, but to ask: Who are you?, the British historian Theodore Zeldin, who has worked for decades with the history of the conversation says. During a conversation, the key is to learn something about the other. For Zeldin, the art of conversation is still at the beginning, because humanity had yet learned to appreciate that the interlocutor is a mystery in its mystery but a source of Inspiration.
the path of The desires leads not only to give a man something he really wants, but also to be an Exercise in the art of conversation and the attentive, non-judgemental listening. On this path, the gift will be blessed at the end. The gift goes beyond the pure gift and is the expression of a deepening connection between two people.
