Do I give more?
What is asked of you is no longer yours.
You've given more than what was expected. Then you receive a call from the same person asking for more. You feel abused and obligated. A sense of self-righteous indignation slowly climbs up your spine and perches on your head. You say no. You don't care anymore.
Is there such a thing as giving too much? When do you know when its time to stop giving? I usually say stop when you're angry. But there is something going on that might be an assault to logic. If you carefully become mindful, you will notice the phenomenon in your life as I have on countless times.
My husband is a lover of technology. When we had a fight, I threatened to leave him. His deadpan face just showed me how much emotion that evoked. But when I casually put the iPad in the microwave oven, he started walking towards me to say sorry. That is just to illustrate how for him, his technological toys are the "currency".
One day, we found out a friend of his was suffering from cancer. Many people from his social network pitched in. While he loved his friend, he was slow in joining in. He then told me that he thought that the right amount to give was around the cost his new iPod. But then, he hesitated. "That's a new iPod" he told me. "And look at how many people have already helped." As that thought lingered in his head and he went about his day, something absurd happened. For some reason, his new iPod disappeared. We couldn't find it anywhere. We searched for days, it was not in our very small apartment.
Then, an old Kabbalah teaching entered my mind. When an opportunity to give presents itself, you must accept it, for it you don't, something of equal value will be forcibly taken from you by circumstances. These opportunities empty you, in order to make way for a blessing to come down from the supernal world. I told him this.
I said to him, "Honey, I think you should give your friend a visit and give the amount you wanted to." He looked at me, and nodded in agreement as he sat down our couch. As he sat down, he heard a sound of paper crunch under him. It was an envelope. Inside the envelop was his new iPod.
