43. Giving and receiving or buying and selling? | with Inma & Matthew

Paraphrasing Inma who said something along the lines of ‘in any given day, there's more giving/receiving than buying/selling taking place on the planet’ I want to challenge you to think about it. If you read this before pressing play on the 43rd podcast episode, then maybe hold off for a minute or two. Close your eyes. Sense into it. What is buying/selling? Who is buying/selling? What’s the benefits and the drawbacks? How does it serve? And whom? And then. Lean into the other one. Giving and receiving. What does that mean? Where does giving/receiving take place? Who’s engaging in it? Where? And why? How does it serve? How does it differ from buying/selling? And what if… one or the other was suddenly outlawed. A world with no buying/selling taking place. Or a world with no giving/receiving taking place. Can you picture these two scenarios? What would they each lead to? What would the impact be, if you removed either of them? Me, Matthew and Inma spend quite some time meandering around this tankespjärn, and it’s stayed with me ever since our conversation. It’s made me more conscious of when I engage in either of these four activities (buying, selling, giving, receiving). But it’s also made me more aware how subtle a lot of the giving is, and even more so, the receiving. I receive things  a l l   t h e   t i m e. Every breath I take. There’s a gift given me, that I receive. Every sip of water, each morsel of food, is a gift given to me, that I receive. Every smile I encounter, every song I hear, the flower I smell… all of it gifted me. Some more easily and readily received than others. (There’s a lot of song’s that I am not interested in receiving. Flower’s I don’t particularly enjoy looking at or smelling.) The shelter my house brings me, the warmth the stove graciously extends to me, how the intricate system of my physical body can propel me 8 kilometers by bike swiftly and without too much trouble. It’s simply amazing, when you start to think of it. Brings me the same type of feeling that I get sitting outside on a dark night, looking up at the stars in the universe… drowning in the vastness of it all. I hope you will find a nugget or two of tankespjärn once you press Play, inviting me, Matthew and Inma into your life for a while, gifted our presence, perhaps receiving something you didn’t expect? Links: Matthew Word Bain on Medium and Instagram Inma J Lopez, sommelier and writer on Attention The Wolf Moon of January Episode 37 of Tankespjärn with Helena Roth, in conversation with Steve Emery The History of Bees by Maja Lunde Where the crawdads sing by Delia Owens Robin Wall Kimmerer and Braiding Sweetgrass Episode 39 of Tankespjärn with Helena Roth, in conversation with Reddy