More Than the Thing Itself

Last year, I used a small cosmetic mirror as part of a breathwork experience centered on self-love. It was maybe three inches across, the kind of thing you might keep in a purse or makeup bag. Afterward, I put it in my travel jewelry box, and that is where it stayed.

Months passed. I traveled with it without thinking much about it. It became one of those objects that has a story attached to it even though, most of the time, you aren't thinking about the story at all.

Recently, I spent a weekend with a group of people doing some deep personal work. As I was packing up on the last morning, I opened my jewelry box and saw the mirror. I noticed it, and then I kept packing.

One of the women in the group had brought a small statue of Kwan Yin with her. She told me later that Kwan Yin had lived in a special place in her home for years. She hadn't been planning to bring her that weekend. At the last minute, she changed her mind.

Over the course of the weekend, we had gotten to know each other. We had listened to each other's stories. She had heard things about my life that I don't share in ordinary conversation, and I had been allowed into parts of hers.

By the end of the weekend, she told me that after hearing my story, she wanted me to have Kwan Yin.

I remember being struck by the generosity of that. This wasn't something she had brought because she was ready to part with it. It was something she had cherished for years. But something in the connection we had made allowed her to look at it differently and imagine placing it in my hands.

Then she told me something else.

When she had been deciding what to bring with her that weekend, she had considered bringing a mirror.

And suddenly I remembered the little mirror sitting in my jewelry box.

The one I had seen that morning. The one that already carried a story about self-love for me.

I went and got it. I told her its story, and I gave it to her.

Neither of us had brought those objects intending to give them away. They became gifts because something had happened between us first.

I've thought about that part more than I've thought about what either object might mean.

There are plenty of questions I could ask about what happened. I could wonder why she decided at the last minute to bring Kwan Yin. I could wonder why I happened to notice the mirror that morning after carrying it around for so long without thinking about it. I could wonder what it means that she had considered bringing a mirror and that I happened to have one with me.

I'm sure I could find meaning in all of those things.

But what stays with me most is the connection that made the exchange possible.

We had listened to each other.

We had shared enough of ourselves that something she had carried into the weekend became something she wanted me to have. And when she told me about the mirror she had considered bringing, something I had been carrying for months suddenly became something I wanted her to have.

The objects hadn't changed. Our relationship to them had.

I think people can do that for each other.

Someone tells us what they're going through and suddenly we remember a story we haven't thought about in years. Someone trusts us with something tender and we find ourselves sharing something we usually keep close. We hear a person describe an experience and realize we know exactly what book we want to lend them, what song we want to send them, what words we have been carrying that might belong in this conversation.

Sometimes we don't know what we have to offer until another person comes close enough for us to recognize it.

And sometimes we don't know what we are ready to receive either.

If she had simply handed me Kwan Yin at the beginning of the weekend, I would have understood that she was giving me something beautiful. I wouldn't have understood what it cost her to let it leave her hands. I wouldn't have known the years it had spent in her home or why hearing my story had made her think of me.

The connection changed what I was able to receive because I knew something about the person who was giving it.

That feels important to me.

Receiving can look like accepting help or allowing someone to do something kind for us. But there is another kind of receiving that happens when someone lets us into a part of themselves. They tell us where something came from. They share why it mattered. They trust us with the story attached to what they're giving.

We receive more than the thing itself.

I didn't only receive Kwan Yin that weekend. I received the knowledge that another person had listened to my story and been moved by it. I received something she had cherished and the trust involved in letting it leave her hands.

And when I gave her the mirror, I understood something about the other side of that exchange too. I wasn't giving away an object I no longer needed. I was sharing something that had been part of my own story because our connection made me want her to have it.

Maybe that is why the exchange has stayed with me.

Neither of us could have planned it. We had to meet first. We had to listen. We had to share enough of ourselves for something to become recognizable between us.

Only then could two small objects that had arrived with completely different histories find their way into different hands.

I don't know what the mirror will come to mean to her. I don't know what Kwan Yin will come to mean to me. I'm finding that I don't need to know yet.

For now, I like knowing that something she had cherished for years is with me, and something that once reflected my own face during an experience about self-love is with her.

The objects remind me of what became possible because, for a little while, two people let themselves be known.

A Gentle Invitation

As you move through the week ahead, I wonder...

What has someone been able to give you because you let them know you?