from "what can i take?" to "what can i give?"

i remember at a funeral, after the funeral, a relative came up to me. she was young, relatively speaking, and i remember talking to her for some time. finally she smiled and got up to go. i saw that she smiled at another person.

it was then that i realized what a jerk i had been. i had been talking about myself and my own "realizations" in life. i had been talking about my future, my present, my past, and so on.

i had not asked her much about her life. about her job. about her family.

and so i realized that i was still on "receive." like a small child, i was still asking the world for everything, and giving nothing in return but more requests for attention.

if i had that encounter to do over, i would have asked her about her family. about her job. about what she thought about god and death and life and all of that.

but no. it was too late for that one time. that time had passed. and i had been "on receive" without thinking at all about "giving."

that is the mark of maturity. a mature person gives. an immature person thinks only of taking. and a criminal mind is one that takes, at the price of destruction of the other and at the cost of his own soul, perhaps. a truly creative person, on the other hand, creates love and creates things and creates giving-ness, not receiving-ness.

live to give. give attention. ask questions of the other person. it's not all about oneself and one's own life. go closer to the heart, as rush says in its song. not closer to the head and to ego. when talking to another person, always ask oneself, what can i give?