Although it was allegedly my birthday, there’s no question that Vlad would declare himself the winner of the Greatest Gift Recipient Contest.
Although he’d grown up from puppyhood with one or two weekly hangouts with my BFF Cha Cha, a full season has passed since they’d seen each other.
It’s impossible to describe the level of surprise and euphoria Vlad felt when we picked Cha Cha up at the train station for a birthday visit, but you might get a small sense of it from this photo:
While marveling at Vlad’s ten minutes of joyful dancing during his Cha Cha reunion, I’ve also been pondering further Twyla Tharp’s remarks on generosity.
In fact, it’s inspired this month’s new meditation on Generosity HERE.
I’ve been particularly struck by Twyla’s comments about generosity’s impact on one’s luck.
She writes in The Creative Habit:
I cannot overstate how much a generous spirit contributes to good luck.
Look at the luckiest people around you, the ones you envy, the ones who seem to have destiny falling habitually into their laps. What are they doing that singles them out?It isn’t dumb luck if it happens repeatedly.
If they’re anything like the fortunate people I know, they’re prepared, they’re always working at their craft, they’re alert, they involve their friends in their work, and they tend to make others feel lucky to be around them.
Vlad—or any loving dog—does exactly that, making you feel like you’re the center of the universe.
Interestingly, this kind of generosity is a gift that some rare humans have, too.
Take, for example, Jackie O.
In a JFK Library Forum titled “The Literary Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis,” Bill Barry, who worked with Jackie during her editing career, said:
“She had a way of making you feel that you were the only person in the room, and that your book, your idea, your story, was the most important thing she’d ever heard.”
While it’s easy to get stuck on material things as benchmarks, there are so many ways to be generous.
As illustrated by Vlad and Jackie, perhaps the easiest — and yet the most profound — way to be generous is through attention.
Indeed, Simone Weil famously wrote that:
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
The poet Mary Oliver echoes this with her line:
“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”
For Weil, this kind of generosity is sacred:
“Attention, taken to its highest degree,
is the same thing as prayer.
It presupposes faith and love.
Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”
While that’s hardly a newsflash for any dog lover, it nonetheless captures the power of that connection.
When I think about the resonance between the sacred, birthdays, and generosity, I immediately land on a favorite Hafiz poem (“channeled” by Daniel Ladinsky).
So Many Gifts
There are so many gifts
Still unopened from your birthday,
there are so many hand-crafted presents
that have been sent to you by God.
The Beloved does not mind repeating,
“Everything I have is also yours.”
Please forgive Hafiz and the Friend
if we break into a sweet laughter
when your heart complains of being thirsty
when ages ago
every cell in your soul
capsized forever
into this infinite golden sea.
Indeed,
a lover’s pain is like holding one’s breath
too long
in the middle of a vital performance,
in the middle of one of Creation’s favourite
songs.
Indeed, a lover’s pain is this sleeping,
this sleeping,
when God just rolled over and gave you
such a big good-morning kiss!
There are so many gifts, my dear,
still unopened from your birthday.
O, there are so many hand-crafted presents
that have been sent to your life
from God.
If we accept the premise that being generous is a way to get luckier — again, new meditation HERE — does that transform us into spiritual mercenaries?
Or are we just receiving the promised perks from obeying a universal law?
Indeed, no less than St. Francis of Assisi tells us that:
“It is in giving that we receive.”
Perhaps more importantly, it’s wise to remember that NOT being generous, not giving freely comes with a very high price.
Pulitzer Prize–winner Annie Dillard cautions us that:
“The impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned
is not only shameful; it is destructive.
Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you.
You open your safe and find ashes.”
In a similar way, having shared yoga for 25+ years, I know that when it comes to the body, it really is “use it or lose it.”
I haven’t missed a day of personal practice in five plus years, yet I realized last week that as rigorous as my personal routine is, recently I’ve been a tad neglectful of a very specific muscle group (specifically, the piriformis and its external hip rotator friends).
Casually attempting a pose that was once effortless — only to discover some reluctance in my hips — was quite eye-opening.
The same is perhaps even more true for our creative lives.
Returning to Annie Dillard:
One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time.
Don’t hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.
The very impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better.
These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.
Or, as Maya Angelou advises:
“You can’t use up creativity.
The more you use, the more you have.”
You can, in other words, always afford to be generous.
Vlad spent most of the ride with Cha Cha pretending he was a lapdog.
Just before Vlad and I headed to the train station, I led a brief kickoff moment for the beta readers of The Science of Getting Rich Journal I’m releasing this fall.
(Although it’s an informal cohort, the links for signing up will probably vanish on Monday or Tuesday — but you can still request access HERE.)
Many people have already thanked me for my generosity in sharing the book, but as Twyla predicted, I’m the lucky one; I get to receive invaluable feedback, delight in success stories, and share with a community.
Indeed, as Hafiz / Ladinsky writes:
The Beloved does not mind repeating,
“Everything I have is also yours.”
As the second part of the year begins, especially in these chaotic times, it’s wise to remember what the poets, saints, and philosophers all tell us:
The more creative you are, the more inspired you’ll be.
The more you give away, the more you’ll have.
And the more generous you are, the more everybody wins.
