Another lingering reflection, from a recent Randoms...:
When you give of yourself, it tends to cost you something.
I'm guessing most people are either consciously or sub-consciously aware of this, which often fosters an impulse to a question like — do I want, then, to give of myself?
Perhaps this tendency accumulates over time (prior experience influencing the present one).
Cost, though (depending on the severity of the situation), becomes a way to truncate something that (not only isn't necessary) limits the dynamics involved in giving. Because giving is a reality that plays not as much in loss as it does in expansion.
You have probably heard people say, when you give, you also receive.
And what is received is often in a different dimension (than what is given), which makes the equation-format for evaluating giving-at-a-cost pretty arbitrary.
In the end, we don't sustain a spirit of giving by maintaining cost-benefit analysis. That is not why we give. More often we give because of need — it is for the good of someone else. And, when need isn't a primary driver, we find ourselves giving because of the good that doing so enhances.
Giving of ourselves extends something we have for the good of something or someone else.
We don't, in the end, give because of what we receive. We give of ourselves...because whatever the cost may be, it is good for us (both givers and receivers) to do so...and that kind of giving both extends and expands the goodness of it.
