Sunday, December 7, 2008
Gifts
Gifts should be given without any expectation that you will be recieving something in return. Emerson states that you should give a gift that relates somehow to yourself. The gift you give should represent some part of yourself and should be meaningful to you somehow. If you just give the person what they want then there is no meaning and they are just getting what they expect or want. There is no excitment in getting a gift you already know is coming. Receiving something that is least expected and shows a characteristic about the giver of the gift then that gift is much more meaningful than say something you wanted originally. Emerson says you should receive gifts with no emotion of happiness or sadness because that shows that you cared more about the gift than they person giving the gift. You should receive gifts with an appreciation that someone is giving you something and shouldn't care about the actual gift as much as the person giving you the gift. If I lived my life as an Emersonian gift-giver I feel as though people would be think I'm kind of strange. People in society today expect certain gifts given to them and don't care as much about the person giving the gift. If I gave someone who cared nothing about baseball two tickets to a Padres Game they probably would stare at me blankely and be thorougly confused. People don't care about gifts that you like, they care about gifts that they like. I gave to my grandparents when I was 7 or 8 a big book of poems me and my brother had written for them for Christmas. They loved it because it was meaningful and we had worked hard on writing these poems for them. I feel it would be difficult and somewhat life changing to live your life as an Emersonian gift-giver/receiver.
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1 comment:
Hey Jesse
So its Christmas season and we are all thinking about gifts: what we are going get and what we are going to give. What would you rather receive? A gift someone spent time thinking of and making for you? Or a material thing you really want? Key word here is thing. Ten years from now you will not care about that great designer shirt of who you got that great C.D. from. What you will remember is that gift that someone gave that they made or carefully picked out for you. It would be a different story if that C.D. was a mixed C.D. with all their favorite songs on it. You stated in your response that "People don't care about gifts that you like, they care about gifts that they like." I disagree, I think that people appreciate something that is meaningful to the giver because it does not make them feel flattered but instead the appreciate and feel closer to the giver. Other than that I totally agree with your response and think that we should think about Emerson this year during Christmas, but not too much because it is a little overboard and we could come off as rude.
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