To receive is to give

BAD: SOMEBODY gives me a gift.

Worse. Somebody does me a favor.

Much worse.

Somebody does some serious intervention, providing me with needed medical advice or emotional or financial support.

Equally terrible: Somebody gives me a compliment.

He says that to everybody.

What’s he want from me, anyway?

What’s this guy’s angle?

It is excruciating to receive.

Very, very few people can receive.

Especially those who are so good at giving.

Yes, I’ll give.

I’ll give the shirt off my back.

I like being on top.

In control.

I like having that feeling that I myself do not need anything from anyone.

But to receive? To admit a vulnerability? To be dependent on somebody, even momentarily — even for the few seconds it takes to smile graciously upon receiving a gift or a compliment?

That’s hard.

For some, it’s harder than making a tall charitable donation.

I’d rather die than take money from somebody else, or rely on people for their influence, their “in” with the bank president, the clergyman, the college admissions officer, the government bureaucrat.

I’d rather die.

I value my independence.

My dignity.

To take a favor? That’s not who I am.

Yes, it can be excruciating to receive.

Some people die, literally, rather than take someone’s advice to go to a doctor. Some people miss that chance to attain the right job or business because, at the crucial moment, they just can’t humble themselves to receive the necessary help.

Other people shrivel internally because they cannot allow someone else the joy of bestowing something on them. To receive is actually the hardest way to give — to give someone else a sense, however small, of power, of control, or worth, of dignity, of having the small triumph of, for once, being the shining light.

G-D IS a giver.

The Torah is a gift — we speak of matan Torah, “the giving of the Torah.”

Life is a gift.

Sight and smell are gifts.

Likewise, colors.

And flavors.

Health is a gift.

All of creation is a gift.

G-d created us to receive His kindness, His chesed.

G-d created us as receivers.

He wants us to be receivers.

It is a form of imitatio dei to receive.

Is it hard?

Then it, no less than giving, requires practice, study, discipline, will and the willingness to follow this teaching of the Torah the same as any other. Receiving, no less than giving, is integral to the religious personality.

To receive, graciously, is divine.

To receive, paradoxically, is selfless, as it affords someone else pleasure; perhaps, depending on circumstances, a pleasure that the giver rarely gets.

There are people without resources who may have precious little opportunity to give. Their gift may be only that smile, that compliment, that piece of advice, that you find so hard to receive. But if you take it, if you receive it, it can be as big a gift as a million bucks.

Chesed — being kind to someone — is a two-way street. It is to give.

It is also to allow oneself to be given to.

G-d gives to us. We can do no less than let others give to us, too.

Hillel Goldberg may be reached at hillel@ijn.com.

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