Through Every Turn I'll Be Near You, I'll Come Anytime You Call, I'll Catch You When You Fall, I'll Be Guiding You

--"Magic", Olivia Newton John

I hate buying gifts for people.

More precisely, I hate buying gifts for people I've known for a long time because, more often than not, everything I've wanted to give them over the years I already have. One can only buy so many pieces of jewelry, books, DVDs, articles of clothing, and other assorted trinkets and baubles before you run out of ideas. One can only go to the well of knowledge about a person so many times before it's obvious you know every inch of their tastes and that you've reached the end of that broad spectrum; there simply isn't anything more they like that you can buy them.

Plus, my feelings on the matter is that you buy gifts for the people you like and love because you want to make them happy. But you also want to demonstrate that you truly do know them. That's why people buy personalized gifts and why people buy expensive gifts. The way I look at it is that personalized gifts demonstrate that you were paying attention to every word they said, every preference they professed, and any tidbit of information they might have allowed to slip out. With expensive gifts, it's like swinging for the fences. You don't choose to buy an expensive unless you're sure somebody will appreciate it. An everyday gift, something you see on the way coming home, it almost doesn't matter when it doesn't exactly bowl the recipient over. With an expensive gift, you're trying to impress that person by showing the depth and scope of your affection for them. If you miss on a gift heading into the neighborhood of four or more digits, you're setting the bar for your demonstrated knowledge of them a little higher.

But what happens after that?

What happens when It's painfully obvious you know them from cover to cover? Is there any point in getting them something that further illustrates this fact? I think, at the stage, after you've gotten down to the crust of a person, nothing you give them will be good enough when measured against those earlier presents, the ones that reassured him or her their trust in you was not mislaid. I think at that stage you can stop looking for physical manifestations of your innermost feelings. I think at the stage you stop seeing your memories together as an impetus for splurging on extravagant presents; you start to look on the memories themselves as the greatest presents a person can have.

I believe once you've reached that magic mark, where you're approaching almost two decades of being in consistent, if not constant, contact with a person, you're all set on the gift-giving front. I mean--after all, which would you rather keep?

The absolutely greatest and most perfect gift in the world?

Or the person who gave it to you?


the planets align so rare
there's promise in the air

In thirteen days I'm going to have to come up with something that isn't half as good as I want it to be because there's no representation good enough, no symbol symbolic enough, and no offering worthy enough to celebrate how overly fortunate the world was that a certain star decided to shine upon upon all of us that day. There's no replacing the magnitude of a lifetime's worth of friendship with something bought at a register. There simply isn't.

I hate buying gifts.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers