The Best Way To Give A Gift

Today's my birthday and I feel like this is the perfect time to write about this.

Our daughter, Ella, loves surprises. Everytime we go to the toy store she always checks for egg surprise toys, and when we go to the grocery she always gets herself a Kinder egg chocolate (it's half chocolate, half random toy). So now our house is full of random little toys. She plays with those toys for a little while and forgets about them 😅, it's the surprise that she loves.

I meditated on this and tried to remember my own childhood. I remembered that I too enjoyed the surprise of receiving random gifts. Up to this day it makes me happy remembering the day I got an unexpected train set gift from my aunt for Christmas. And back in college my church friends surprised me by sneaking into my bedroom at 12 midnight to sing me happy birthday, almost gave me a heart attack, but I loved it! 😂 Now that I'm older it's mostly, "hey what do you want for your birthday?" or "I got you something from your wishlist".

Let's talk about wishlists. This was not really a thing when I was young, I think we started doing something like this with my family and friends when I was already in college, and it was mostly during Christmas. It's fun to do especially knowing that you will be receiving something that you know you like.

When I became a husband and a dad, for some reason having a wishlist felt different. I meditated on it and tried to understand why it felt different. As a husband and a dad, I needed to mature and think about my family, about how my actions and words would affect them and our home dynamics. At the same time I thought about how each family member's actions and words would affect each other. Then I thought about the circle outside my family that we were influencing and being influenced by, how everybody's actions and words affect each other. Then I thought about this generation and what it's like as a whole. As I was meditating on these things a particular topic highlighted itself, Entitlement. For some reason it felt like entitlement recently became a subtle common thing with everybody in this generation. So I wondered, why is that? I continued with this train of thought and found myself connecting the dots with wishlists. I knew wishlist isn't the root cause of entitlement, but I couldn't shake off the thought that it could affect it. I thought about it more, and so I compared the two types of gifts, one that's based on a wishlist and the other that isn't.

Wishlist	No wishlist
Initiated by the receiver	Initiated by the giver
The effort to think about the gift is on the receiver	The effort to think about the gift is on the giver
Little to no surprise	Surprise
Disappointment on the receiver when their wish is not granted	Receiver has no expectation that leads to disappointment
Pressure on the giver when items on the list are hard to acquire	Giver can choose a gift within their capacity

This does not stop here though, the more wishlist-based gift-giving becomes a tradition the more side effects occur. People may disagree with me on this but from my experience and observation this is what happened/happens: (Additionally, it alters the concept of gift giving for little children who started gift giving this way.)

Wishlist	No wishlist
Giver becomes complacent	Giver practices thoughtfulness
Receiver loses the heart of gratitude and contentment	Receiver exercises gratitude and contentment
Receiver subtly becomes an Entitled adult	Receiver maintains the innocent heart of a child
It's about gift-taking	It's about gift-giving

So I discussed these meditations with my wife, Kyle, and she agreed with me. A couple of years ago we decided to never do wishlists again. We concluded that a gift is not a receiver's right but a benefit brought about from the relationship. A gift represents the heart and mind of the giver towards the receiver. Wishlist destroys that expression. We realized that in a very subtle way, wishlists destroys the art of giving and the heart of receiving.

Wishlists destroys the art of giving and the heart of receiving.

For us, this is the best way to give gifts. From the heart and mind of the giver to the hands of the receiver.