A toast to 2005 with "To Give and To Receive"

The writing below is from the Humanist book "Humanize the Earth". It moved me deeply the first time I read it though I did not want or rather I could not understand, far less comprehend it.The gentle, profound humour made me not reject it and now, I can only give it to you just like I did give it as the last personal work to the Africans in December 2004, knowing that you too will dare to to try to undersantd and apply what is written.

From my heart to yours, enjoy.

XV. To Give and To Receive

1. Let us look at the relationship you establish with your external landscape. It may be that you consider all objects, people, values, and affections as things presented for you to choose among and devour according to your own particular appetites. It is likely that this centripetal vision of the world denotes a contraction that reaches from your thoughts to your muscles.
2. If this is the case, it is certain that you will have the highest regard for everything that is related to you—your sufferings as much as your pleasures. It is doubtful that you will even want to surpass your personal problems, because in them you will recognize a tone that is, above all, your own. From your thoughts to your muscles, everything has been taught to contract, not to let go. Hence, even when you act with generosity, calcu­lation motivates your apparent disinterestedness.
3. Everything enters and nothing leaves, and from your thoughts down to your muscles everything becomes intoxicated.
4. And having contaminated all those around you, how can you later reproach them for their “ingratitude” toward you?
5. If we speak of “giving” and “helping,” you think of what others can give you, of how they can help you. But the best help that could be given you would consist of teaching you to let go of your contraction.
6. I tell you that your selfishness is not a sin but rather the fundamental error in your cal­culation, for you have naively believed that to receive is better than to give.
7. Remember the best moments in your life and you will recognize that they were invari­ably accompanied by a disinterested giving. Reflecting on this should by itself be enough to change the direction of your existence—but it will not suffice.
8. Let us hope I have been speaking of someone else and not of you, since surely you have understood such sayings as “humanize the earth,” “open the future,” and “overcome suffering in the world around you,” all of which are based on the capacity to give.
9. “To love the reality that you are building” does not mean to place the solution to your own problems as the key to the world.
10. Let me end by saying: If you want to overcome your profound contradiction, you must produce valid actions. If these actions are valid, it is because they help those around you.