Generosity

Today's prompt for REVERB14 is:

Look back at last year and consider: How did generosity open your heart?  How can you cultivate generosity in the coming year?

"Let us forget, with generosity, those who cannot love us."
-Pablo Neruda

I think, that of all the things you could give a person, time is the most precious.  Time is one thing in life that you can't get more of...you can't hoard it up to use later...when you go to sleep tonight, today is gone...you never get it back.

I'm going to be selfish here and tell you that what opened my heart this year was something that was given to me.  Not that I'm not a giving person...I think that if someone needs something I'm capable of giving to them I will...but it feels wrong to me to talk about whatever my own good deeds may have been.

Instead, I'm going to tell you the truth: the generosity that has opened my heart this year has come from what others have given me...from discovering that there are people out there in the world who are willing to invest their time in me....people who willingly want to be a part of my life.

I'm sure that this year isn't the first time it's ever happened, but it seems like it.  Maybe stopping to think about generosity today caused me to be a bit sensitive to the generosity of others...or at least to take the moment to name it and to really appreciate it.

Maybe this will sound silly, but one of the most generous things that happened in the past twelve months was, on more than one occasion, a friend of mine remembering things that I said in passing...things that I didn't suspect anyone was really paying attention to, let alone taking note of.

Life is busy and most people are so busy focusing on getting by that they don't stop and look up at the people around them.  I'm guilty of that myself at times.

The fact that someone looked up and took notice of me is something I deeply treasure.

I am hoping that in the coming year, I can cultivate this same type of generosity toward others, as well as working on another form of generosity, one that is very difficult for me: forgiveness...towards other people as well as myself.  

Here's hoping that 2015 will be the year of freely giving.