The Commodification of Love

Love

There’s another holiday lurking somewhere around the corner. Valentine’s Day. Mother’s Day. Sweetest Day. Birthdays. Christmas. We’ve programed ourselves to give and receive gifts on these and many other holidays to show our love for one another. We’ve even been told that gift-giving is one of our “love languages.” This idea is utterly ridiculous, and [...]

Getting Rid of Gifts

Gifts

Our culture is a gift-giving culture, one that places great emphasis on giving physical items to other people as a measurement of caring. It seems silly to even write that, but it’s the cold truth. We often give gifts to show we care. So, on your birthday and a handful of holidays, people show they care about [...]

Thoughts About Anonymous Giving!

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Last month I spoke to a wonderful group of yoga teacher trainees about “Selfless Giving” and  ”The Art of Anonymous Gift Giving.” They are actually one in the same. Their assignment for the next teacher training, a month later, was to give an anonymous gift, journal about the experience and hopefully send me an email [...]

For Mother’s Day

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Motherhood brings as much joy as ever, but it still brings boredom, exhaustion, and sorrow too. Nothing else ever will make you as happy or as sad, as proud or as tired, for nothing is quite as hard as helping a person develop his own individuality especially while you struggle to keep your own – [...]

Selfless Giving

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While going through my first Yoga teacher training one of our assignments was to “give an anonymous gift” to a fellow classmate. We were instructed to resist the temptation to give up our anonymity. I thought this was a rather clever and simple assignment. Not so much!  As instructed I secretly chose my “givee” and [...]