The Greatest Gift We Can Give a Loved One
This essay originally appeared in the Monday morning newsletter on 2/15/21.
Do you ever read or hear something and immediately – and without effort – it becomes committed to memory?
I love when this happens. It feels like it’s God’s or the Universe’s way of underlining something for me and telling me to pay attention.
Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, and although it was a different Valentine’s Day than previous years, it was still a day filled with gift giving and expressing appreciation for loved ones. Thinking about this, I was reminded of something I heard once and automatically committed to memory. I can’t remember where, but sometime in 2019, I heard the following quote attributed to an executive coach named Khalid Halim:
“The greatest gift you can give the people you love is the gift of your own well-being.”
When I first heard this, I was skeptical. I couldn’t decide how I felt about it. Did it seem counterintuitive? Wanting to see if I could prove the idea wrong, I considered how it could apply to my own life, and I quickly found an example to prove its validity.
I knew barely a handful of people when I first moved to Chicago after graduating college. But then, a few months into living there, I found out that a best friend from home would be moving to Chicago by chance and I was elated. It felt like a godsend! For the next three years, we had so much fun frolicking around a new-to-us city and stumbling our way into our mid-twenties. When I first heard Halim’s quote a few years ago, this friend had just made the decision to move back home to Florida. And I found that this quote succinctly summed up everything I was feeling: a sadness about what was coming to an end, but more prominently, an overpowering feeling of excitement for her and her next chapter.
Before this quote, I was confused how I could hold space for both of these emotions at the same time, but then I understood. This move was so clearly the next best step for her and her own well-being, and that’s all one can want for a close friend.
Inspired by this example, I started to think about how I could better invest in my well-being, and to be completely honest, this was something that was a lot easier to think about in 2019. Now that we’re almost a year into a pandemic, does the idea still ring true? What about the working mom who’s going on her 11th month of juggling professional responsibilities and virtual learning? Or the frontline and healthcare workers whose days demand nonstop, urgent, extremely important work? How can one expect anyone to add something to their list right now?
All of our realities are filled with different challenges and circumstances, so I certainly don’t know the answer or solution for you. But for me, I know that just as a I need to charge my electronics every day in order to use them, I also need to find ways to “recharge” myself.
It’s not always something that’s easy to remember and the perfect opportunity is not always available. But I know it’s important and that something is always better than nothing, especially right now, when our worlds are turned upside down. As Gretchen Rubin often writes, a “Secret of Adulthood” is that “if I give more to myself, I can ask more from myself.”
I also appreciate Halim’s focus on the word well-being, which is defined as “a good or satisfactory condition of existence.” I like the emphasis on aiming to feel good not great. Satisfactory not outstanding or perfect. It takes some of the pressure off. Maybe all you have time for is a few minutes of stretching or quickly reading something fun or sitting quietly for five minutes before your next task. As long as it’s making you feel good, something is better than nothing.
Lastly, this quote makes me reflect on if I’m doing the best I can at supporting others in pursuit of their own well-being. Am I making it easier or harder? As St. Thomas Aquinas once said, “To love is to will the good of the other.”
After a holiday weekend all about love, how can we keep showing love for others and for ourselves through our actions this week?
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