Being a Reluctant Receiver.

There’s a Christmas present sitting on the bookcase in my office, still elegantly wrapped and be-ribboned, and complete with a matching gift tag to affirm the pedigree of the giver. It’s the first time in all of my life that a Christmas gift has remained unopened at the end of Christmas Day. What’s odd is that I haven’t felt driven to open it. What’s less odd is that I have no desire for gifts, at least not the material sort.

I rarely feel grateful for material gifts. I’m often grateful to receive a communication from one of the few special people, and no doubt I would be most grateful to be caught if I was about to fall off a cliff. Such gifts touch the soul and the safety centre respectively, but material gifts are more likely to evoke a mixture of confusion and guilt.

‘Why has this been given to me?’ is always my first response. ‘Have I done something to earn it?’ If I have, then it’s no more than fair recompense and fails to qualify for the title of gift in the strictest sense. If I haven’t, a sense of imbalance sets in. It’s undeserved, and therefore a reason to feel guilty.

(When I was around six or seven, one of the older boys in the street had been ordered by his mother to get rid of some of his little-used toys. He knocked on our door and gave them to me. I remember bursting into tears, and I’ve never quite worked out why. I don’t burst into tears these days, but I do still feel uncomfortable when people give me things.)

So will I open this one tomorrow? I don’t know yet. As I said, this is the first time it’s ever happened.

And I’m critically aware that this blog is turning into something resembling episodes from a second rate post-modern novel, and what used to be multi-coloured has become, almost unremittingly, a darker shade of indigo. Maybe that’s why visitor numbers have fallen for the third month in succession. Not that numbers matter a jot, of course, but writing has been my primary focus for the last twelve years. Without it, where would I be?

It also occurred to me today that psychopaths must have a relatively easy life.