\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one has ever become poor from
giving.\u201d<\/p>\n
– – – Anne Frank<\/p>\n
I\u00a0was in my car, on the way to the home of a prospective client to ghostwrite her\u00a0memoir. I felt apprehensive. During the first meeting, things hadn\u2019t gone\u00a0smoothly. She had been withdrawn and guarded and she looked a little\u00a0suspicious, as if I were the enemy. I had signed a lengthy NDA before I even\u00a0saw her. I would honor it \u201cin perpetuity\u201d as the wording went, I respected her\u00a0and would never share her information, but it wasn\u2019t enough for her. She was\u00a0still untrusting.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0understood why. The press had not been kind to her. They had lied and called\u00a0her a controlling bitch and as a result, she was leery of doing interviews with\u00a0anyone. Since writing a memoir requires endless interviews, I had assured her\u00a0that she had the final say on anything that went into the book. I don\u2019t think\u00a0she believed me. I just couldn\u2019t make a connection. When I get that feeling at\u00a0the first interview, I usually walk away. My experience tells me that if it\u2019s
going badly before we start writing, it will only get worse. But in this case, she\u00a0hadn\u2019t been unkind and when her agent told me she wanted a second interview, I decided\u00a0to give it another try.<\/p>\n
As\u00a0I got closer to her home in the Pacific Palisades, I became anxious. I had a\u00a0list of what I wanted from her. I wanted her to open up. To tell me the truth. To\u00a0trust me with her stories, the things that would make her book come alive. I\u00a0wanted her to like me and to hire me. But as I passed through the security gate\u00a0and drove up the private road to her home, I realized that I\u2019d been so busy\u00a0thinking about what I wanted, I hadn\u2019t been thinking about she might want and what\u00a0I could give her.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0made a new list. I could make her laugh. I could cross the divide between celebrity\u00a0and civilian by showing her ways in which she and I shared the same human\u00a0traits and obstacles. I could show her that I had no expectations. No demands.\u00a0No desire to take anything from her. And finally, I could give her love. Arriving\u00a0anywhere with an open heart increases the odds of the other person doing the\u00a0same and having a pleasant time together.<\/p>\n
When\u00a0I stepped into her grand home, I smiled as the assistant showed me to the\u00a0living room. When the client entered the room and looked at me, I smiled again.\u00a0So did she. I didn\u2019t ask her any questions. Celebrities like to run the show so\u00a0I listened to her concerns and needs. I answered her questions, I kept my eyes\u00a0on hers, and if there was something I didn\u2019t understand, I asked her about it. The\u00a0upshot was that she hired me to go on the long journey with her to excavate her\u00a0life. I consciously arrived with an open attitude each time I showed up for an interview\u00a0(her assistant called me her Valium), and I ended up writing her a bestseller.<\/p>\n
It\u00a0isn\u2019t unusual for a client to feel ambivalent and a little scared when they\u00a0face writing a memoir. None of us like uncertainty, the feeling that we don\u2019t what\u2019s\u00a0about to happen, especially when someone else (that would be me) is witnessing\u00a0it. We try to control our environment, but it doesn\u2019t work. No matter what we\u00a0do or say, no matter how much we prepare, life is famous for throwing curve\u00a0balls. The only thing we can control is how we show up. If we\u2019re aggressive in our\u00a0dealings and our communications, if we\u2019re fixed on \u201cwhat\u2019s in it for me?\u201d\u00a0instead of \u201chow can I help?\u201d the negativity will come careening back and we\u2019ll\u00a0never find peace. I call it the boomerang effect.<\/p>\n
Giving\u00a0liberates the soul. It feels good. It\u2019s that simple. There is pleasure in\u00a0giving pleasure. I know a woman who has a hard time making friends and a harder\u00a0time keeping them. She was invited for coffee at a neighbor\u2019s house with some\u00a0other women and when I asked her if she\u2019d had a good time, she said, \u201cI didn\u2019t\u00a0get anything from any of them.\u201d I wanted to ask her what she gave them, but I knew\u00a0it would trigger her and she\u2019d end up feeling badly and lonely. She was already\u00a0feeling badly and lonely enough.<\/p>\n
During\u00a0the eighties, I traveled across the Philippine Islands to research the infamous\u00a0faith healers. At the end of one day, they invited me and my companion for dinner.\u00a0They lived in a particularly impoverished area. We sat at the table as they put\u00a0out plates of food and then they stood back and watched. I felt torn. The food\u00a0they were serving us was all they had. If I ate lightly, they\u2019d have something\u00a0to eat that night but they would feel slighted. Food was what they had to give\u00a0and they wanted us to receive it. If I ate heartily, I knew it would make them\u00a0happy. I would be receiving their gift. So I did. Unfortunately, the food was some\u00a0kind of mystery meat, maybe water buffalo, and later, it ended up in the toilet,\u00a0but that isn\u2019t the point. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The point is that cooks need eaters. Authors need readers. And givers need receivers. Spiritual leader, Stephen Levine, said, \u201cWhat the world needs is some good receivers.\u201d It\u2019s important to note here that receiving and taking are not the same. Taking is a greedy act, powered by entitlement and selfishness. It\u2019s about limitation. Takers believe that there isn\u2019t enough to go around so you better get it while you can. Receiving, on the other hand, is a humble act powered by gratefulness and appreciation. A receiver believes there\u2019s enough to go around. It\u2019s about abundance.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0following two Aesop\u2019s fables demonstrate the end results of taking and giving.<\/p>\n
Taking:<\/p>\n
A\u00a0jar of honey broke and the sticky sweetness flowed out onto a table. A number\u00a0of flies began buzzing around. They didn\u2019t wait for an invitation. They landed\u00a0on the table on their feet and began to gorge themselves. Pretty soon, they were\u00a0smeared from head to toe with honey. Their wings got stuck together, they couldn\u2019t\u00a0pull their feet out of the sticky mass and they died, giving up their lives for
a taste of sweetness.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0moral of the story: Be not greedy for a little passing pleasure.<\/p>\n
Giving:<\/p>\n
A\u00a0serpent wrapped himself around an eagle\u2019s neck and got ready to bite him with his\u00a0poison fangs. When a man happened to come by and loosened the serpent, it was enraged\u00a0and blindly bit into the man\u2019s flask of water, injecting its venom. An hour later,\u00a0when the man lifted the flask to his mouth, the eagle swooped down, seized the flask\u00a0and destroyed it.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0moral of the story: An act of kindness is well repaid.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u201cNo one has ever become poor fromgiving.\u201d – – – Anne Frank I\u00a0was in my car, on the way to the home of a prospective client to ghostwrite her\u00a0memoir. I felt apprehensive. During the first meeting, things hadn\u2019t gone\u00a0smoothly. She had been withdrawn and guarded and she looked a little\u00a0suspicious, as if I were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2465"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2466,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2465\/revisions\/2466"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}