…And Speaking of Gifts…
It’s coming around to that time of year again: gift-giving season. And I’ve got a real conundrum this year, not just in gift-giving but also gift-receiving. If your “people” are anything like mine, a requisite Thanksgiving Day discussion involves rattling off a list of things I want to family members who want to buy me things for Christmas. Here’s the problem: my life conditions make it such that my list of “needs” far outweighs my list of “wants” to the point that talking about “wants” is almost moot.
I’m actually okay with that reality. The conundrum is that people don’t want to hear it. So this year, when my mom asked (because she’s the Grand High Mediator of Pacyna-family Gift Giving, acting like an info clearinghouse for me and my brothers) what I wanted and I told her “money so I can pay my bills,” she had a rough time accepting it. “Really?” she asked quizzically and, frankly, piteously. “You don’t want anything that we could, like, wrap and put under the tree?” Of course, the answer to that is yes. But it begs other important related question-based binaries like, “Do I want a DVD or to pay for my car?” “Do I want a snazzy new scarf or to pay my cable bill?” “Do I want a new book or to eat breakfast two weeks from Tuesday?”
The issue here has nothing to do with want or need but actually the confounding of them. I’m at a point that my wants are trivial because my needs are primary–and they’re big ones. I’m one good pair of jeans away from financial ruination; I don’t expect it will always be that way, but that’s the state of things today.
So, here’s the question: Is it possible not to conflate the two? How do I generously receive “little thingies” which are meant for good when they do nothing to solve the issue of my totally cracked peace of mind? I don’t want to be ungrateful and I’m not. But my practicality on this, I think, might be alarming to my family.
Ah, the holidays.