Giving as Paradox

“He who preserves his life shall lose it; he who loses his life shall truly live,” so said Jesus; a paradox if ever there was one.

We humans, at our very core, seek to save our lives. WE diet, take medications, exercise, have surgery, pay for ambulance and police services, some carry weapons. We go to great lengths, often jeopardizing the lives of others in a desperate bid to outwit death; to prolong life. WE are not alone. The whole of the animal kingdom from amoeba to the whale defend or elude to preserve life. Even the plant kingdom seeks to preserve life with offensive and defensive strategies designed to preserve the life of the individual plant and its neighbors. If you have the time, it’s a topic worth reading into if you want to be amazed.

But, back to us humans.

In a sense, preserving something is holding it in reserve for the future. I possess something today which I think I might need for the future, so make arrangements to preserve it. When we were younger and much poorer, we canned and dried fruits and nuts against a day when they would not be available. In the same spirit, I want to have a nest egg against some future rainy day (I know, that is a mixed metaphor, but I’m not clever enough to think of an extension to “nest egg.” Would I preserve an egg against a future eggless day? Not in my taste inventory thank you.) So in times of plenty, I store up money, representing my labor, in a safe place. I hold it, preserve it for that sometime when I might need it. Money, perhaps, is a symbol of life in Jesus’ puzzling statement. At least it represents some portion of my life. Holding on to it is an allegory of life and at the same time, a potential life-preserving action.

What is there about giving, losing, surrendering something for someone else’s benefit that is life enhancing? If, instead of hoarding, I give, I seem to be acting against my own self-interest. I might need that money some day.

But the answering paradox is that it is in the very act of giving that I find my true self. It is in losing that I find; giving that I receive; laying down my life (my time; my money) that I truly live (become enriched).

I find this rule, then, that there is a life beyond living which only comes from voluntary loss of that which I value. When I give, I receive tenfold in a mystical realm where money does not exist and where the heartbeat and the breath are not moving physical blood and airy gases. The very spirit of this non-place place is a mirror universe in which the act of giving is in reality, receiving.

It is to my shame that I find this place so very rarely; that I surrender to the this-place-and-time reality and hoard and grasp at life and things and money. But in those once-in-a-while moments when I break through into that other I know I am truly home and am truly myself.