Here is what a friend wrote me : "I have always (as long as I can remember, that is) steered away from gifts. There has always been, for me, an obligation attached to it, which I wanted no part of. That consideration is present now, and was activated by your note in a previous letter re “what gifts will we be bringing” or something close to that."
I think his point resonates. Although throughout the western world people have begun to complain of the loss of community, we started to lose community when we moved to the opportunity in anonymous cities. There was something great about unburdening oneself from nosy neighbors and interfering relatives! My great hero, Bernard Lietaer reports that studies show what most creates community is neither genetic relatedness nor proximity, but the giving of gifts. Apparently the Japanese alone among developed nations do not report loss of community, and theirs is a society still awash in the exchange of small gifts.
What I'm just beginning to appreciate is the existence of a whole other level of gift, a level where one gives ones gift for the sake of giving what one has to give, for the self-expression, for the mastery of an art. That giving is free of obligation.
By all accounts, Pable Picasso was an able businessman and negotiator, who did well for himself financially. However, I'll bet he played the money game on an entirely separate game board from the game board where he played master painter. This whole thing is beginning to look to me like one of those trick pictures: a rabbit from one perspective, a duck from the other.
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