What do you need?
What do you have to give?
I was part of a Gift Circle at a potluck I attended yesterday, and we had to create nametags answering those questions. It’s haunting me this morning, as I wasn’t satisfied with my answers.
Learning how to ask for help is a skill. And it is hard.
At first, I didn’t put anything on my nametag because I needed more time to think about it.
Then, I put that I needed “a watering can” and I had to give “an old computer”. These were true, but maybe more suited to a Buy Nothing Group than to a Giving Circle.
We went around the circle sharing what we had to offer and what we might need, and cheering when people were able to connect around surprising invitations.
I realized that another purpose of this exercise was to give little clues about yourself, so others could get to know you better. That person has an abundant garden and likes to give cut flowers, that person is looking for adventure and has four bikes, that other person makes their own soap, everyone likes tiramisu.
My own answers gave very little insight into my own life or who I was as a person.
One truth is that I had blanked out a little at the question what do you have to give, and slid down into a mini shame spiral: feeling the pressure close in around my eyes and the back of my head, as the gremlin voices assured me that I have nothing to give…
I was mostly able to hold the shame at bay. I didn’t believe that voice, but that still didn’t mean that I could come up with an offering on the spot, with the slightly bitter taste of self-shrinking still in my mouth. So “old computer” it was.
When it was my turn to share during the circle go-around, I did try to also offer something around the fact that we treat our house like a renegade community art space, so if anyone wanted to install a gallery show or do something at our house…but I heard myself trip up over unspoken pandemic caveats around safety or risk or what we did or didn’t do these days but used to do…
It wasn’t until after I got home from the potluck that the answers of what do i have to give revealed themselves: comics recommendations, sewing and mending help, a listening ear. (I hesitate to add ‘holding of space’ or ‘spiritual accompaniment’ to that list, though in some ways, they are my truer gifts, because I don’t know what they mean, I am scared about revealing them, I don’t know what my boundaries are around offering them are, yet — or again?)
Other answers to what do i need also revealed themselves: a hiking companion.
Which is really to say: more friends, and balms for a lonely heart.
~
Upon further reflection, the other truth is this: I had already had my needs met that day. Before the potluck, I had had tea with a friend, one-on-one, and our conversation meandered in the way that catch-up’s will.
What came up in that conversation was that I missed the opportunities we used to have to move together — in contact improv or authentic movement or even butoh or paratheater workshops. And she revealed that she’s been meeting with a handful of friends on some Sunday afternoons and she would forward along the info.
I don’t know that I would have even thought to add that to a list of needs: a space to move authentically and with others.
Maybe another way to ask what do you need these days is what do you miss?
And lean into the tenderness of both what it means that it is missing from your life right now AND what it means that it’s possible that someone will give it to you in (literally) unexpected ways.