Giving and Receiving
It’s a commonplace of Western thinking and morality that it is “better to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). At this time of year, great importance is placed on the giving of gifts. Whole material industries of gift giving have arisen and corresponding social industries commenting on whether these are good or bad are very active. Yet, consider the following excerpt from E. M. Forster’s novel A Passage to India:
Aziz overrated hospitality, mistaking it for intimacy, and not seeing that it is tainted with the sense of possession. It was only when Mrs. Moore or Fielding was near him that he saw further, and knew that it is more blessed to receive than to give. These two had strange and beautiful effects on him — they were his friends, his forever, and he theirs forever; he loved them so much that giving and receiving became one.
Despite the period in which he was writing (the afternoon of the British Empire), I don’t think Forster is just setting up some contest of Eastern and Western values here; I think he is inviting us to consider some of our basic assumptions about the nature of giving and receiving.
The element of possession or even of coercion in giving that Forster shows us in his protagonist Dr. Aziz can also be evident if we reflect on some of our own everyday experiences. The host who insists that one tries the X or has the second helping of Y seems more concerned with their own performance as host — on feeling like they have a lot to give, and on having what they are giving be received — than on the receiver’s experience. It is more important to them for you to have something they are giving than for you to have what you want. In giving they take a little of the recipient’s freedom. Further, some people are chronic givers and can never receive themselves. This usually reflects an unrealistic wish to be free of needing anything from anyone.
There are of course legitimate pleasures to be had from giving. Thinking about the other person, noticing or working out what they might want, getting them just the right kind of thing, can give one a deservedly great feeling. It’s like solving a puzzle in a way, but one with no fixed solution. And then also are the regular empathic pleasures of seeing the receiver filled with satisfaction of a desire that they did not, until then, quite realize they had.
What about the pleasures of receiving? Along with the thing or experience itself and whatever one may get from it, in getting just the right thing from the gift giver one is aware of having been held in mind by them in a specially effective way: They have solved the puzzle of one’s desire (often a mystery to oneself — What do I want?) — at least temporarily and in this one domain.
Forster suggests, in the passage above, that there is a kind of letting go required to be able to become a receiver, perhaps a kind of passage from one manner of relating to another. To be able to receive a gift graciously one has to feel, paradoxically, like one has enough that one can take something from another person. The relation of friendship, for example, may be sufficient for someone to enter that relatively full state of not needing to feel completely full all on one’s own.
Chronic receivers exist obviously too. Interestingly as with the chronic giver, the chronic receiver also suffers from a profound feeling of emptiness. Their solution to this problem of lack, on the other side of this coin with two tails, is to assume that they will be given to in all relationships.
How might giving and receiving “become one”? Again, I don’t think Forster is selling us an item of purloined Eastern mysticism. Separating giving and receiving from satisfying a fundamental question of self-esteem — using either as a way of holding oneself together — can free them up to fill their more ordinary functions. On the contrary, feeling secure in relation to another person, neither needing to be only giving to them or only receiving (masking an empty-fullness), it may not matter so much if one is giving or getting. Your pleasure can more freely become mine and mine yours. Giving and receiving may then transform into relating.
As a therapist it is often my job to help people think about the duties and pleasures of being a giver and receiver. For example, the basics of sex therapy involves practice in giving and receiving pleasure isolated from the performance pressure of orgasm. I might ask a couple to practice giving (only) back rubs to each other. The receiver’s job is to give feedback to the giver about what does and doesn’t feel good. The giver’s job is then to be open to that feedback and do things the way the other person wants. Predictably, couples struggle with different parts of this process of relating to each other— due to some of the common problems just discussed, like being chronic givers or receivers, and some unique ones. Identifying and ironing out those struggles then becomes the core work of the therapy.
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