Few things satisfy like giving thoughtful gifts to those we love

By David McElroy · May 18, 2018

I’m cursed with the desire to give gifts to those I love.

There are few things that delight my heart like having a flash of inspiration about what a woman would love and then rushing off to excitedly make the purchase. When I get such an idea, I’m like an impatient child at Christmas. I can’t wait for this oh-so-perfect gift to arrive or to be delivered.

When I have the right kind of relationship with a woman who wants gifts from me, it’s a magical experience. I honestly don’t want anything in return. I just want to experience her joy at receiving something from me which she honestly appreciates.

It’s when I don’t have such a relationship — when there’s someone I would love to give to, but I can’t — when it becomes a curse. And it seems to be something which I can’t turn off.

Twice today, I’ve run across things which I think a particular someone would love. She will never know that, because she’s no longer in my life — by her choice — and so she will never receive what I’d like to send.

Maybe it seems as though I should be grateful. After all, I don’t have to spend the money which I would otherwise spend to buy something for someone else — for things which would do me no practical good. Maybe that’s the rational way for the brain to feel. But my heart feels cursed that it can’t have the joy of sending gifts.

Some of my most treasured memories from the past are of giving gifts which I knew delighted someone I loved at the time. Even when it’s people who are no longer in my life, the memory of having made them happy does something wonderful for my heart.

In my last serious love relationship, I had a number of ideas for things I desperately wanted to give to a woman, but I was going through a low period financially. I was having trouble simply surviving, so I couldn’t afford most of what I wanted to give to her. It feels terribly unfair that when I’ve finally reached the point when I could afford to give her some of those things — some of them, not all — the relationship is gone.

And I have no idea why I can’t let go of wanting to give her things.

There’s a selfish part of me which would love to find a way to secretly send gifts without letting her know who sent them, but that would be terribly unfair. It would be a violation of psychological boundaries. I won’t do it, but my heart wants to.

When I was young, I enjoyed getting gifts just as much as anybody. For months before Christmas, I wore out the pages of the Sears Christmas Wish Book, dreaming of what I wished someone would give to me.

But getting presents just because they’re things I’d like to have isn’t that enjoyable anymore. There aren’t that many things I want — and the relatively few I would like to have are very, very expensive. So the only presents that mean anything to me are the ones which show that a giver has spent the time and thought to come up with something that’s perfect for me, even if it’s not expensive.

The more mature I get, the more I mostly want to give.

I want to give delightful things to a wife — things which she would love, things which she would never have bought for herself, maybe things she thinks she doesn’t deserve. I want to give things to a little girl and a little boy — things which will make their eyes light up with joy and give them hours or days or years of enjoyment.

Having the inspiration for such gifts is magical. It makes my heart sing. Buying such gifts and then delivering them (or having them shipped) to the person I love is exciting. When it’s a gift which is truly thoughtful and right for someone — that feels like giving a piece of my heart.

It’s only a curse when you want to give and you can’t. And that’s where I am tonight.

I’m very eager for the day when I can once again give my heart and my mind through gifts to one I love.

Share on Social Networks

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

Related Posts