At every single event this yes-but question comes up sooner or later: ”I’ve got this precious xyz and I don’t know what to do with it.” As in: I could only bring myself to part with it if I find some guaranteed worthy recipient. Ideally ‘very much in need’ (for some people a charity shop isn’t good enough for their clutter, they insist on a refuge or orphanage), eternally appreciative and deeply grateful. - But, hey! – there is no such thing as wasting an item by giving it away! The real waste is clinging to stuff we neither use nor love!
Here’s some inspiration to part with unneeded items, very evocative, written a long time ago, but still valid to this very day. Enjoy.
“Then said a rich man, speak to us of giving. And the prophet answered:
You give but little when you give of your possessions. For what are your possessions but things you keep for fear you may need them tomorrow?
Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable?
There are those who give and know no pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, or try to be virtuous.
They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes it’s fragrance into space.
All you have shall some day be given. Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors’.
You often say: I would give, but only to the deserving. The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture. They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.
Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and nights is worth all else from you. And she who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life deserves to fill her cup from your little stream.
And what desert greater shall there be, than that which lies in the courage and the confidence, the charity, of receiving?
See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, an instrument of giving.
For in truth it is life that gives unto life – while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.”
From: Khalil Gibran, The Prophet
