Dr. Agnes S. Thomas

Emerging out of the Christmas season, I have been pondering over the meaning of giving and sharing and how much has changed over the years in our choices and practices. In a heavily consumeristic and individualistic society and culture, how do we keep the true value and meaning of giving and sharing as an essential part of our human experience that stems from the family and community we grew up in?

One of the images from my younger days is of my elder brother bringing home sweets and sharing them with us, as he did whenever he had them. He showed care by sharing his favorite sweets / food with us. I remember that was the practice in our community too. The idea of sharing was ingrained into us as ‘normal,’ and expected, and that was the way of living. I believe the ins and outs of our daily experience as kids tend to influence our approaches, world views, ways of looking at life, and our choices; ‘Sharing was caring’ was a central part of our growing up. Sharing and extending hospitality varied from family to family. However, everyone shared. Kids or adults who kept things for themselves were seen as selfish or spoiled.

The value of sharing was foundational to unifying and building communities and families and binding individuals with one another.

How we approach sharing, caring, and reaching out to someone in need are shaped by our experiences and observations, mostly during our younger years. The foundation to compassion starts from our ways of understanding the other, and the gradual progression of it is to feel with the other. The purest form of love is the action that comes from a place of empathy with the other that moves you to act with care. There is another experience I always recall with gratitude that makes me believe the attitude and value of sharing have nothing to do with how much or how little one has. It all has to do with how we have experienced giving and receiving.

One example of caring I have the privilege to experience came from one of the little boys I befriended on the street of Bangalore who frequented a place where I used to volunteer on Sundays. One day when I went to meet him, he said he had something special in his pocket for a few days, carefully kept in its original wrapping paper. The silver wrap was mangled and lost its shape and color over the days,’ but none of that mattered. We opened it and shared three small pieces of mashed-up chocolate from a bar of dairy milk someone had shared with him. Since it was ‘special,’ he kept it to share at our weekly get-together. A gift to remember and cherish for a lifetime and a lesson about receiving with humility. Sharing is not complete by the act of giving but also by the act of receiving, both bound by love and care.

Looking back at those years, I can see how those little sharing practices profoundly influenced our thinking and caring for family and community. The value of sharing was foundational to unifying and building communities and families and binding individuals with one another. Then bringing it to my current reality, is there a cost to how we are practicing the value of sharing and caring, with our increasing dependency on our individual accumulation and desire for individual choices to be respected and valued? How are we modeling the value of sharing with our younger ones, and how do we plant.