On Trying to Give that which Can't Be Given

I really thought Tom (my boss and workout partner at a gym) would share my excitement, not get angry. And the worst part was, I didn’t understand what he was so upset about.

It all happened some 25 years ago when I found my very first deer antler in the woods. You may know that a difference between horns (think bulls) and antlers (think bucks) is that animals with antlers drop them each year in the winter and then grow new antlers again in the spring. Animals with horns, however, keep their horns all year around.

Knowing this, every winter when I went in the woods I looked for dropped deer antlers. Given all the time I spent in the woods watching deer and learning their habits, you would have thought I would have easily found an antler or two. But even after years and years and years of looking for them, I never did (part of that is that animals like squirrels and mice eat deer antlers on the ground as a source of calcium).

Finally, when I was maybe 23 years old, I found one (and, ever looking, I haven’t found one since until this year, when I found two!). Finding that antler was one of my life’s great thrills, the culmination of so much time, effort, and tightly focused seeking. Immediately I thought of my little brother, who I would take hiking with me one day every week. “I bet he’d love to find an antler,” I thought to myself.

With that in mind, I put the antler back down in the woods, hiked with my brother to that spot, and then let him “find’ it (he didn’t know I’d found it first). Well, it was telling Tom this story that got him so worked up. “You ruined that for him,” Tom said. “He didn’t spend years longing to find an antler. He hasn’t spent years searching for one. He has no context in which to fully appreciate the accomplishment, and by your making it so easy for him, he never will.”

I was so happy with myself for giving my treasure away to share my joy with brother. Why couldn’t Tom understand that? I didn’t get it.

I do now. There are things that are not ours to give, no matter how desperately we might want to do so. There are things we cannot give, no matter how much we might wish we could. And when we do give them, the danger is not that our gift will not be appreciated or fail to meet our desired ends, but that it will take something even more precious away from the one we seek to love.

I think parents in particular would do well to remember this.  We all want to make life easier for our kids, and often have the means to act on our desire.  But the truth is, in the end we might  just be doing the opposite.

Comments

[LL]

I totally understand your point about parents doing well to understand what "gifts" we give our children. We so desperately want them to be happy we don't realize many times that making their life easier isn't really helping them. However, I think your story about giving the antler, that YOU truly appreciated, speaks volumes of how much you must have loved your brother. I think it's a very sweet story and there's no need to be harsh about it. Your brother could've gained (and could still) a very different and very valuable lesson from it.

Elise found an antler when she was 5 or 6 years old and has always called it her Power Stick, pretending it would give her a super powers. It's still around...somewhere. Being a city girl, I thought they would've been a dime a dozen. Just goes to show, I don't know much! :)