Skip to main content

Gifts

Image
By
This is a chapter from my third book called Love letters

I was hoping the word gift would have an interesting etymology so that would make a good start to this chapter. The origin of the word gift turns out to be pretty ordinary to me. The word "gift" descends from the Old Norse word "gipt". Gipt means both "gift" and "good luck". There were many times I was lucky and won gifts. When I was in my teens I won a game boy from the Flavorite contest. There was a pallet man as we called him who passed through the village.

At a team building exercise at my first job out of university I was the closest to guess the amount of beans in a bag and won some spending money. At another job I won a stack of Movietowne tickets for scoring the highest in the orientation game. For a time, many weekends I would go watch a movie in the cinema. As a child I looked forward to receiving the gift of money on Eid day. One hadith narrates, "Give each other gifts and you will love each other." Hadiths are traditions of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).

I love receiving gifts but I also love giving gifts. I once gifted my uncle a nice Casio watch that he cherished and used until the band was worn and needed to be replaced. My mom often talks about the beautiful chain and earring set I once gifted her. Charity is also a form of gift giving. I remember the great floods of twenty eighteen when the country came together to help those of us who were affected by the flooding.

It is important to me to have an attitude of gratitude. I am thankful for the gift of life. Every day that I wake up and I am able, I thank God. I am also thankful for the gifts of talent that I was born with. Picasso once said, "The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away." I am learning that one of my gifts is my literary ability and gift of storytelling. For those of you reading this book I would like to suggest that this book would make a great gift to the people special in your life. This is a story of someone sharing their loves with the world and this book will be an encouragement for others to write their own love letters.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Talking to God

By
If you want real answers to things in life then talk to God. It is 639pm on a holiday and I have decided to write. God listens. God truly listens. God has the entire context. God is wise. God wants us to talk to Him. God wants us to rely on Him. I also think about God talking to me. I am a good listener. I listen plenty more than I talk. I have started asking God to talk to me. But how would God talk to me? We have his revelations through the holy book. We have the example of prophets. But what else? How do I listen to what God has to say? Where and when can I hear God? Are my thoughts from God? I try to feed my mind with good things. Things that will not corrupt my mind. It seems that we have to use our intuition to separate what is from God and what is not from God. My friend Chatty says that in Islam, Allah speaks to us not through new revelations or voices, but through guidance: the Quran and the Sunnah, which become personally meaningful through understanding Allah places in the h...
Post a Comment
Read more

Life on Earth

By
I was reading through the Quran and came to the story of Adam, Eve, Satan, and the forbidden fruit tree. I had thought that life on Earth was created as a test. But as I reflected on the story, I began to wonder whether we are only here because Adam and Eve failed. However, that is not the case, as my friend Gemini explained to me. While the story of the forbidden fruit is a central event, the Quran indicates that humanity’s presence on Earth was part of the original divine plan, rather than a backup plan or a punishment for sin. Before Adam was even created, God announced His intention to place a steward (khalifah) on Earth. This suggests that the Garden was a temporary training ground—designed to teach Adam and Eve about free will, temptation, and the path of repentance. Even if they had not eaten from the tree, they were destined for Earth to fulfill their roles as moral agents. The incident simply served as a necessary first lesson in human frailty and God’s immediate forgiveness. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The success of failure

By
It is 358am and I have decided to write. Context matters. Our context matters when we write and read. We could read the same thing and get different meanings. Definitions matter also. We may define things differently. For example, what is success? What is failure? Also, do I just define success and say that anything that is not success is failure? What about something like the success of failure? What does that mean? My friend Chatty tells me that this is something writers, philosophers, and even scientists keep rediscovering: meaning is not fixed—it is negotiated by context and definition. Life is a stew of success and failure and in between but never one or the other. We see what we are looking for and things become what we see. This reminds me of something I came across online, "Whoever looks for the good qualities in others will acquire all good qualities within himself," from Habib Umar Bin Hafiz. Do you look for failure or success within others? Take context as the lens...
Post a Comment
Read more