The Gift Exchange

“I have found among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.”

Maya Angelou

All of my life, I’ve been fascinated with gifts — what constitutes a gift and how we value what we are given. Most people immediately recognize gifts as wrapped packages, ones we give at Valentine’s Day, holidays or special occasions. Ones that tell the recipient they are special and mean something to us. Gifts tell us we matter and are valued. But…gifts have to be received in order for their true value to be appreciated.

Do they always come with pretty bows and snazzy paper? Or do they sometimes come in small, almost unnoticeable, insignificant ways? Can gifts be what we offer each other every moment of our lives? Perhaps the gift of a smile? The gift of allowing someone to go first in line? The gift of spending time with someone who feels alone? The gift of showing up authentically to another person? Gifts come in ways we often least expect or recognize. Sometimes they have a time-release quality — hidden treasure that’s not found until years later. I call those “time capsule gifts.”

Regardless of the form in which a gift comes, if it originates from the heart, it is never wasted. Even if the recipient doesn’t immediately seem to understand or appreciate it, the energy with which it is given is evergreen. Yes, those gifts last forever.

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A few months ago, I visited a grocery store, one I had never been to. Carts and people were lining the aisles, waiting for their turn at the cash register. I studied my options and picked a line. Everyone seemed distracted, looking at their phones — our new babysitters. I watched with curiosity as a man slipped through the crowd and made his way to an empty cash register. He didn’t look like an employee with his black baseball cap and t-shirt emblazoned with an army slogan on it. He had no identifying name tag, yet he proceeded to open up the register, which in my book made him official.

He turned to face the crowd and — with a huge smile on his face — said, “Welcome! Welcome! Please come to my line!” For a minute, I thought this might have been some TV game show stunt with hidden cameras. I didn’t see any though. Several customers looked up from their phones, eyes glazed over, expressionless faces … and didn’t move. I, on the other hand, recognize a window of opportunity when I see one and immediately claimed my place in line.

The cash register man took a deep breath, as if he had just sat down to play a piano at a concert, and looked at his newly formed line. The minute he saw me (I was third in line), his face and eyes lit up. Even with his mask in place, I knew he was smiling.

“It’s so good to see you again! You always have smiling eyes.” I looked around, like Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver when he says, “You talking to me?” Indeed he was.

I answered him, “Even with masks on, we can smile with our eyes. Sometimes those are the brightest smiles.”

Then what happened was truly amazing.

Shoppers began “waking up” from their phone stupor. Like a switch had been flipped, they came to life again. All of a sudden people were chatting pleasantly; some were even laughing! A lady from another line poked the cash register man and asked to see his smiling eyes. Someone even broke into the song, “When Irish Eyes are Smiling.”

I looked around to see if anyone else was catching this.

When it was my turn, he rang me up and prattled on and on about being positive, how the world needed more of that. He said no matter where he was or what he was doing, he always tried to leave gifts. I could swear he had a twinkle in his eyes. It seemed as if we had been friends forever. Before I left, he looked at me and gave me a message: “Thank you for being such a bright light.”

I walked out to my car wondering what had just happened. I mean, I was in a grocery store of all places with people who were grinding their teeth, NOT at a resort where people are all happy-like and in good moods. “Perhaps,” I thought to myself, “this is real-life episode of ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ has just happened.” It felt as if a window of time had opened up, a bubble of light filling the space, touching all hearts.

I wish I had turned around before leaving to see if he were still there. The entire episode felt surreal, over-lit somehow. Could I trust what happened? I’ve returned to the store several times now and have never seen him again. But I trust the gifts he left in his wake — opened hearts, smiling eyes, new friends, community that was created in an instant, a gathering of souls, memories.

I will always remember how that moment in time felt, as well as the effect it had not only on me, but also on everyone else. The true value of any gift lives in the heart that recognizes it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if every moment and every space became an opportunity for a “gift exchange”?

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