Gift Giving Stress – Day 6 of 12 Subtraction Project

On Friday morning I was reading Braeden the book “The Gift of Nothing” it’s a great story about a little cat that wants to get his friend, a dog, something that he doesn’t already have, but it’s tricky, because his friend has everything, so after some good thinking the cat wraps an empty box and gives the gift of “nothing”. Upon opening the box his friend declares that there is nothing in it. The little cat affirms it’s true there’s nothing in it, just me + you and his friend the dog loved it. It was nothing and it was everything.

We have so much. “I don’t need a thing!” we say with conviction because truly, we do not. But the gifts aren’t really about the THING in the box. It’s a tiny way of saying “hey! I see you, I appreciate you, I notice what you like and enjoy and I thought of you when I saw this thing and I wanted you to have it to know how important you are to me.”

I have an idea.

What if we didn’t always have to tie all that feeling up into a package?

What if we let whatever gift giving stress remained go today?

What if instead we took a moment to write a note that shared the feeling?

Here’s how you could start:

“I’ve so enjoyed watching you <insert things here> this year. How you show up in your life really inspires me and I’m truly just so glad that I get to do life with you.”

Include a teabag with a reminder to text you or call so you can enjoy that first delightful sip of warm fragrant tea together and connect.

The feeling is everything.

BONUS NOTE: If you have little kids can I make a recommendation? DO NOT LET THEM WATCH TV WITH ADVERTISEMENTS. I am serious. We are in the most dangerous window of all. Where you’ve purchased all the things you intended to purchase and then they see some camera trickery of awesome on a commercial and declare that they need the Paw Patrol Sea Patroller and even though you know they will play with it for all of 5 minutes you’ll feel the pull to buy it because “they’ll be SO disappointed” if Santa doesn’t come through on this thing.