Love Languages: Gift Giving and the Gift of Self

This final gesture of love is last in the genetic order in a certain way.  Giving gifts to one another is the least important gesture when it comes to building community - not that it isn't important, but compared to the practical gestures of service and quality time gift giving is secondary.  Our experience of gift giving is usually connected with celebration, and celebration is important punctually but loses its meaning if it becomes the norm.  Christmas is once a year, birthdays are once a year, anniversaries are by definition once a year (from the Latin word annus meaning year.)  Dates have a connection with the natural world.  The earth returns to the same position with respect to the sun, and we celebrate the person or persons, who, on a day just like today, on this same day many years ago, we were born, or got marries etc.  This is cause for celebration of course, we celebrate the persons who have changed our lives, who have become part of our story, we honor them and thank them with gifts.  Gift giving is truly a gesture of love, and that is why in another sense it is not secondary.  Gift giving is a gesture that manifests the heart of all the other gestures of love.

Gifts can be useful, gifts can bring pleasure, but the heart of gift giving is love and the gift of self.  Material gifts given are a symbol of the gift of self, and this is at the core of all our other gestures of love.  The gift of self requires total freedom, and a choice to love another person.  I will quickly go through the languages of love we already looked at to examine how each of them requires a true gift of self in order to be authentic.

We first looked at the language of physical touch, physical gestures of love.  Physical affection requires a certain amount of warmth, and at the same time must avoid the trap of emotional fusion.  An embrace has a double effect, both on the one embracing and on the one embraced.  Without an embrace becoming cold - without it losing its authenticity which relies on a true gift of self - it must also avoid getting lost in the emotion and selfish pleasure of the gesture.  To avoid this, it helps to remember that an embrace is not primarily for oursleves, but for the other person...  otherwise the gesture loses its quality as a gift of self, and becomes possessive.

With affirmation, or saying what is good, the gesture's authenticity relies on the truth of the affirmation.  If saying the good is seen as a gift, it is in bearing witness to the truth that the good finds its value.  Saying the truth is a gift when it elevates the other person, and so it therefore requires having not only a true judgment, but also the discernment of what makes that truth attractive.  So, in fact, affirmation implies a gift of self because we reveal ourselves as being drawn to the other person because of something truly attractive about them.  Allowing oneself to be attracted to another person as person - a process that is necessary to affirm them truthfully - involved thereby the gift of self.

The smile is another gesture that depends upon the gift of self.  For a smile to be authentic, and therefore a true gesture, it implies or requires a discovery of the true attractiveness of another person.  When we are happy, it is easier to smile, when we are sad or angry, it is harder.  There is a choice however, sometimes through tears or gritted teeth, to show the other person that they are good and dear to us.  The eyes are the window of the soul, and they communicate - despite the mask we may try to wear - our openness or "closedness" to the other person.  A smile begins with the eyes not with the lips.  A smile begins with the way we see reality or the person before us.  And once again, a smile is the gesture that accompanies the attraction we experience to another person.  It is the manifestation of the gift of self that occurs when we respond to the goodness we discover in another person.  The smile begins with a gaze, and the gaze begins with a choice to look at a person as person, and to allow oneself to discover what is hidden yet attractive.

The gestures involving taste - acquiring the tastes of others - could be more easily said by speaking of adaptation and flexibility.  How can we understand the gestures which accommodate other's preferences as implying the gift of self?  We could say that to a certain extent, adjusting one's sensitivity has more to do with the way or manner in which one gives oneself than with the actual gift of self.  On the other hand, adjusting or adapting oneself to another person is essentially leaving oneself behind to make room for the other person in one's manner of being.  In this way, it is a gift of self to the extent that we allow the other person to modify us.  This requires trust of course, and all the respect due to persons.

Being present at home is also a gesture that implies the gift of self.  Presence goes hand in hand with availability.  Being in the house but unavailable is no the same thing as being present.  Being available at home is therefore truly a gift of self.  Without this gesture of presence the rest of home-life will become strained.  But this gesture of presence extends beyond the home.  Wherever you are, your presence has the possibility of being a gift to the people around you.  At a very basic level, as I wrote earlier when looking at the connection between presence and the sense of smell, we can see that this involves hygiene, and at a much higher level we could call this charisma.  This is certainly due in part to personal qualities and at the same  time it is a gesture.  The gesture of presence is the crowning gesture of all the other sensible gestures.  Presence takes on its quality as a gesture of love to the extent that the other sensible gestures (Physical Touch, Affirmation, Smile, Adaptation/Flexibility) are developed and exercised.

For service to be an authentic gesture of love, it requires the gift of self as well.  Being efficient and getting a  job done is important, but it is secondary when it comes to love.  When we perform a service our intention must arise from the free gift of ourselves for the gesture to communicate love.  If we remain at the level of justice, and demand others to work just because everyone has to carry their fair share of the household chores - the community may operate efficiently, but the personal element is crushed.  Of course, when justice is ignored completely, community life becomes inhuman.  A service that is also a gesture of love is the free gift of self - the gift of one's time or talent - whereby one becomes useful for others, or for another person.  For service to be a gesture of love, it cannot simply be a useful function, it must be performed freely and concretely for others or for one particular person.  Once again we see that the gift of self is at the heart of love gestures.

Quality time clearly implies the gift of self.  Gift both in the passive sense and in the active sense.  Perhaps it is important to examine this point a little closer.  We could reduce the notion of the gift of self to an activity, to being an extrovert for example - but the gift of self also implies making one's person accessible, being open, and attentive.  A gift allows itself to be unwrapped. Someone who is a little extroverted in the gift of themselves is like a child who wants to help everyone unwrap the gift he gives them.  People are like onions, they have layers.  As we spend quality time with people, they progressive make their way through the layers to our core.  This process takes time and advances at a unique and personal rhythm.  At times the gift of ourselves is passive, at times active, and the gestures of quality time really highlight this balance.  Quality time does not have a goal if not the gift of self - our person is given by an unveiling of what we think and what we feel about our lives, our search for meaning, and it is also given by our listening, by our welcoming of the other person.

This concludes the more philosophical/experiential analysis of gestures and the languages of love.  With my next post, I will begin trying to elevate the analysis.  Thought can become abstract, but love cannot become abstract or it will die.  Authentic gestures are essential for the exercise and growth of love.  That is why with the passing of a loved one, love understands that unless it finds some concrete way of being in communion - a gesture - it too will die.  Our lives are connected, so when a loved one dies it is like an amputation.  Our heart cannot rest because its resting place has disappeared.  Our heart continues to be drawn to them even though their existence escapes us.  Do they still exist?  If they have ceased to exist, why do they continue to influence our love?  Why does our heart continue to seek them?  If they have truly ceased to exist, love is vain, and if love is vain, life itself is in vain.  But our heart indicates the path to the source of love, the source of goodness.  If we can no longer exercise our love for a friend who has disappeared, we can use the movement of love we still have for them to discover the source of their goodness.  When we discover this source, our heart again finds rest and meaning.  This source is what religious traditions call God.  Does God use gestures to express love?  If so, what are they?  Are there gestures that we can perform to express our love for God?  Are there special revealed gestures of love?