The words, you can only give what you have are much more helpful to a soul than the phrase you only get what you give.
“You only get what you give” are words we’ve all heard crooned in song lyrics and tossed about in new age seminars sailing through the lips of “gurus” using guilt-inducing finger pointing as the path to enlightenment.
Why do I take issue with the sentiment? Because you can only give what you have. And people get more than they give or bargain for quite often I’m certain. I do understand the sentiment, if you’re not a nice person you can expect to be treated poorly. And while that’s true there are so many other ways to give than through behavior. What if your friend is in need of CPR? Could you help him? You could only help him if you had the knowledge or watched enough Grey’s Anatomy.
To me, this interpretation gives me the idea to collect as many tools as possible so I can give what I want to give and help when I really want to help. I don’t know CPR, perhaps now is a good time to learn it. I do know how to listen, how to be there for someone and how cook you a damn good burger. I need notice if you’re coming through, so I can have some ground beef on hand to give.