Beautiful Beliefs 4: I believe that…

…gifts are only fully received when they’re shared.

I want to share with you a quote from Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift which completely changed my views on gifts and on how I wanted to show up in the world.

“I would like to speak of gratitude as a labor undertaken by the soul to effect the transformation after a gift has been received. Between the time a gift comes to us and the time we pass it along, we suffer gratitude. Moreover, with gifts that are agents of change, it is only when the gift has worked in us, only when we have come up to its level, as it were, that we can give it away again. Passing the gift along is the act of gratitude that finishes the labor. The transformation is not accomplished until we have the power to give the gift on our own terms.”

Isn’t that an amazing thought? That we can be given a gift, but that you can’t truly receive the gift until you have allowed the gratitude for that gift to transform you to such an extent that, not only can you fully receive the gift, but that you can pass it along to others.

For me at the moment, this is most present in my fiction writing. I’ve always loved stories – reading them, writing them, telling them. I was always described as an imaginative child, and truly, my imagination has only grown more vivid with age.

When I was 5 years old I announced that I was going to be an author when I grew up and write stories that people would love. And yet, while I have often begun to write stories that I would want to share with others, I have never truly accepted the gift. And because I’ve not received it fully, I’ve not been in the position to pass it along.

Now, I am consciously practicing gratitude for this gift by connecting with it on a daily basis. I am writing stories – stories that I can genuinely see me sharing at some point. And I know now, that when I share them, I will have allowed my gift to be properly received.

And in all honesty, I can’t wait!

This is a Beautiful Beliefs post. If you would like to share your own, simply complete the sentence ‘I believe that….’ on your blog, explore a little about where that belief comes from and how it expresses itself in your life, and then come back here and leave a link in the box below and share it with everybody here.