The Practice of Giving - and Learning to Give When It Is Difficult

Lately, I’ve been noticing something about how people give, take, and withhold - and the thoughts and assumptions that quietly direct those acts. More importantly, I’ve come to see how these patterns can create relational conflict, be they professional or personal. We often think we are simply responding to what someone else has or hasn’t done, when in reality, we may be making a conscious or unconscious decision to hold something back. We wait for the other person to give first - and somewhere in that waiting, a double standard emerges: we expect from others the very thing we are withholding from them.

Why do we do this? If you want to feel safe in a relationship, wouldn’t you also want to be the one to foster trust and consistency? If you feel hurt by something, wouldn’t you want to acknowledge that the other person may be hurting too? If you value your partner’s transparency because it makes you feel safe, wouldn’t you also freely offer that same transparency in return - not as a transaction, but as an expression of appreciation and a willingness to contribute? If we want to experience trust, safety, and openness in our relationships, we have to ask ourselves whether we are merely waiting to receive them - or whether we are actively investing in creating them.

For me, acts of acknowledgment, sharing information, and making other people feel safe don’t require much effort. They feel like natural expressions of care, respect and connection. It has often perplexed me to witness people withhold simple acknowledgment or an apology when it seems clearly called for. In those instances, the question that comes to mind is: What does it cost these people to give what seems relatively easy to me?

Just last week, a friend of mine, who works as an immigration agent, asked me to meet her at 3:00 p.m. so we could take care of some business matters. I arrived on time, only to discover that she needed to spend the afternoon driving around town correcting mistakes on documents for her clients and then picking up her cat from the vet. She asked me to go along with her, making it sound like a brief detour. By the time we finally arrived at her home office, it was 5:50 p.m.

What struck me wasn’t necessarily that her plans had changed or that unexpected things had come up. It was that there was no recognition of what had happened to my time. She never said, “I’m sorry this happened and that we didn’t get to take care of your things as planned,” - no acknowledgment that I had spent nearly three hours waiting and accommodating the changes to her afternoon.

If it had been me, I would have immediately apologized for the detour, explained the urgency of what had come up, and assured my friend that we would still get her things done. And this is where I found myself wondering again: what makes a simple acknowledgment so difficult for her to give? I was the one who had been affected, yet I wasn’t angry. I was accommodating and understanding.

It made me think about how often we withhold recognition because we imagine that offering it means admitting fault, surrendering power, or making ourselves vulnerable. But recognizing another person’s experience does not necessarily mean we are wrong - it simply means we are willing to acknowledge the impact our actions have had on them.

I have noticed that, for some people, even a constructive expression of a need can feel like criticism or accusation. Rather than hearing, “This affected me,” they may hear, “You did something wrong,” and immediately become defensive. Perhaps this is one of the ways our protective patterns show up - accountability can feel like shame, while acknowledging another person’s experience can feel like an admission of fault.

Everyone has beliefs shaped by how they grew up, what was modeled for them, and what they have or haven’t experienced in their personal relationships. When we look at the intricacies of core wounds and the beliefs that can emerge from them, attachment theory offers a valuable lens. It helps us understand how the ego can develop certain protective stances - such as withholding, keeping score, or adopting a rigidly transactional mentality - as attempts to protect the Self from being hurt, rejected, or taken advantage of.

And yet, what is so tragic is that the very things the ego does to hold its fist tight - to protect, withhold, and avoid vulnerability - can become the very choices that prevent us from receiving and from creating the secure baseline of safety and love we long for. It also sheds light on the unconscious mentality of lack that can exist around giving and receiving - a scarcity that isn’t limited to the material world, but can exist just as profoundly in the emotional realm.

I have seen evidence in my own life, as well as in the lives of those close to me, that our emotional tendencies around lack and generosity are deeply connected to - and influence - the material reality we create around us.

There is something profound in the interplay between our inner and outer lives - how our emotions, thoughts, and beliefs influence what we do, what we attract, and ultimately what we manifest and experience in our outer reality.

When you find yourself withholding something that could help resolve an issue because you are waiting for the other person to give first, pause and ask yourself: Is this coming from ego, fear, and lack - or am I genuinely acting from a place of power, trust, and abundance?

Are you acting from a place of love, with a genuine desire to create peace, or are you invested in being right and getting what you want? Are you considering the needs of the other person alongside your own, or have you become so focused on protecting yourself that their needs no longer have a place in the equation?

The ego often seeks certainty before it gives. The practice of authentic giving invites us to give without requiring certainty in return.

There is another layer to this kind of withholding: the desire to eliminate risk. I will apologize only if I know my apology will be accepted. I will tell him how I feel if I already know he feels the same. On the surface, this can look like discernment or self-protection, but underneath it can be an unwillingness to tolerate the vulnerability of uncertainty. We want the guarantee before we make the gesture. That, too, can come from a place of fear and lack - wanting to take out an insurance policy on love before we are willing to risk it.

When our capacity to give depends on knowing what we will receive in return, we are no longer acting entirely from freedom or love. We are attempting to secure the outcome before taking the emotional risk of making the offering. It signals a fear of loss - a mentality of lack that says, I cannot afford to give unless I know I will receive. The ego seeks assurance before it gives, yet lasting relationships are built through acts of care and a willingness to trust that what we give can create the conditions for reciprocity.

You do not plant a seed and say, “I will water you, nourish you, and care for you only if you can guarantee how much fruit you will bear.” You tend to it because you understand that growth requires care long before there is any promise of a harvest. And the nature and quality of that care will influence what the tree is ultimately able to bear.

Buddhist teachings offer an interesting perspective on this through the practice of dāna, or generosity. The quality of an offering is deeply connected to the intention behind it. Giving becomes more liberating when it is not contingent upon a particular outcome or reward. When I apologize only if I know my apology will be accepted, or reach out only if I know the other person will respond in a certain manner, my action is still tethered to an anticipated result. I am not acting simply for the sake of giving - I am trying to control the conditions under which I am willing to give.

The invitation, then, is not to give indiscriminately, abandon discernment, or ignore our own needs. It is to become curious about the mind behind our giving. Can I offer this without needing to control what comes back? Can I act from what I value rather than from a guarantee of what I will receive? Can I allow my actions to be an expression of who I am, rather than a strategy for securing the response I want?

The Dhammapada offers a teaching along these lines: “If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts, happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow.”

I have yet to know a perfect person who hasn’t made mistakes. But our imperfections do not make these virtues any less worthy of exploring and embodying to the best of our ability.

A teacher of mine, who was a Buddhist monk, once told me: “Always give to others that which you wish for yourself.” It is not always easy to live by, but I’ve carried that teaching with me because it shifts the focus away from lack and what we are waiting to receive - and toward what we choose to give. By trusting in expansion rather than operating from lack, we help create the conditions in which connection, growth, and reciprocity can flourish.