The Gift by Michael Casey

The Gift ©

By

Michael Casey

A gift has several meanings, the first thing that springs to mind is a present, for a birthday or for Christmas. If you remember The Bishop’s Wife, with Cary Grant and David Niven, where Cary Grant is an angel called Dudley, well at the end the bishop reads a sermon that Dudley has written. It talks about the nature of gifts, a pipe for an uncle, in those days cigarettes were the norm remember, so you always have to think about context and culture. We make lists and  find appropriate gifts for family and friends, though nowadays it’s the Secret Santa and gifts come from Poundland. Gifts and cards because we love each other, though they can become meaningless because we have too many “friends” so the gift can lack honesty.

Another gift can be the gift of the gab, or salesmanship, forgive me if I don’t say salespersonship, I think that genderising if that’s the correct word, is bastardising language. WE know a woman can be a chairman etc. Now I wonder how many people or is it just women, are offended by my choice of words, if they are they can always translate my words into PC words, or just banish me and my words entirely.  But I have great faith is women, they are better than men after all, and yes I really know that.

Salesmanship is a gift, the gift of the gab puts food on the table, you sell stuff and you earn your pay and get a bit of commission too, which feeds your family. Now there are problems with salesmanship, look at all the miss-sold payment protection insurance. This is where a gift has been misused and ordinary people have lost out, sadly it creates another industry of ambulance chasing lawyers and agencies who fill up your answer machine with adverts for their services.

Gifts come in all sorts of packages,  it can be singing, or art, or bricklaying or carpentry, bending it like Beckham, anything you can think of. A gift is exactly what it says it is a “gift”, people are shocked and pleased when they discover other people’s gifts. He can really sing, it’s a pity he’s blind they say. She’s so beautiful it’s a pity she is in a chair, he writes such beautiful poetry, it’s a pity he is so ugly. People really do say such things, and think such things. Gifts do require a bit of work too, I can remember a school report where the French teacher said I had a flair for the subject, I was good and getting over 80% because I did my homework and worked hard. So some think a flair for something, and flair is another word that is used, is because it was handed to the person on a plate at birth. Yes it can be, but there is work involved, Beckham practised, Wayne Rooney improved his heading skills, by practice, the list goes on in sport. Look at Lady Gaga, she needed an operation because she worked so hard at all her moves that she over used her body, so it needed repair, just as an over-used machine does.

So there is a contrast between perception and reality, yes gifts can be total gifts, like the way we look,  that’s why a beauty should be humble because she did nothing to get those looks, they are the product of her parents’ love, literally. Now talking of love a saleswoman is a kind of midwife to love, how, because when the salesman sells something he observes the love between the couple as they buy their first house, or buy their wedding rings, or just buy their first double bed. The sparks between the buyers are observed as they are encouraged in their purchases, their purchases for life, starting with a ring for the wife.

A poet can be a fat man, with white hair, wearing shades, dressed with a bright orange polo with a polo scene printed on the polo. So when people read this poet’s poetry they may say incredulously, him, he wrote that.  As if this poet was something unpleasant, stuck to the bottom of their shoes. They love the  poetry and may even use it on their Wedding Day, but did HE, did HE really write it.

This brings me to my conclusion, why are gifts given out the way they are given out? Is it a lottery? Yes I do believe it is, its God’s lottery. It’s to remind us that gifts are given for a reason, we should treasure  them, we should nurture them, in ourselves or in whomever we know. Because one day there will be a knock on the door which is our life and we will all be asked. And how did you treat the gifts I sent you?