DailyJim: From cash flow to gift flow

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. Today is Wednesday, July 31st, 2024, the end of July. Today I wanted to talk about from cash flow to gift flow. Now I'm not sure if anyone has coined this before, but I'm just curious of this concept of gift flow. Okay, so if you're not familiar, cash flow typically means for a business or an individual, the amount of cash that we receive versus the amount of cash that we give. So cash coming in and cash going out. And often this is a measure with things like the cash flow statement to understand the financial health of a business, but also of an individual. One of the challenges out here in East Africa, and I think Africa in general, and maybe other places, is this idea of not having access to capital, which means cash flow can be a big problem.

Because people have to pay for things, but they don't, they haven't received payment for the things that they've done before. And so they're stuck without access to credit cards and things like this. Anyways, cash flow.

That's why I started thinking about it. But cash flow tends to be, I think, much more of an exchange-oriented perspective on the world. So, I think I've mentioned before, I think it was Clark and Mills who have done research on exchange versus communal relationships and exchange versus communal orientation.

The more exchange-oriented is, I want to do a transaction in the moment. Like, boom, I give you something, you give me something, we balance the transaction immediately. The more communal orientation is kind of a long-term exchange of gifts, I would actually argue.

Less transactions and more about gifts. And so when I started thinking about this, I was like, okay, so if I am asking people to give me gifts, gifts, how much, so if I want to receive gifts, how many gifts am I giving out? What is the balance? Have I been giving out more gifts than I've been receiving? Have I been not even noticing some of the gifts that I've been receiving? And I think it takes the concept of cash flow and expands it in a way because cash is basically just cash. But, and again, that's more for a transaction. But if we look at it from a gifting perspective of giving without the expectation of something in return, especially immediately, or especially something of exact equivalence. It's more of like, I'm giving because you're in a situation, I understand your needs, your wants, and I care about you, and that's why I'm giving. If we look at it from that perspective, yes, receiving and giving cash could be a part of that.

But it's just a fraction of it. When we're sick, receiving help from somebody can be considered a gift. When we're struggling looking for a job, receiving a connection from somebody to get that job can be considered a gift. So when we're really excited about our dream, receiving an opportunity to speak to people about our dream can be considered a gift. And looking at these different types of gifts that we can receive.

How much are we giving of those same types of gifts? It doesn't have to be the same gift, but the same type. So if we receive money often as a gift, how often do we give money to others? If we receive emotional help as a gift from somebody, how often do we give emotional help to somebody else or support? If we receive arts and crafts from somebody, how often do we give an art or craft to somebody else? or maybe if it's not an art or craft, it's just something that we kind of created ourselves. It doesn't have to be a fancy leather good. It could be something that, you know, we just pieced together ourselves from who knows where. Something that just came like an intimate gift in some way. And I just started thinking about all the little types of gifts that we receive and that we give. And just what if we started paying more attention to that? And I think that might be one of the fastest ways to get to gratitude and to get to feeling alive is just realizing the little things. So just earlier, I dropped my phone and my friend said, are you okay? I was like, oh, when I think about it from this perspective of gift flow, I dropped my phone. They heard that my phone was dropped, thought maybe I fell and asked if I was okay. hey, what a gift to receive that this person was giving me concern. They were giving me attention.

Now, do I give that concern and attention back to this person or to other people? You know, receiving such a gift, how do I give that gift onwards? And I just really like this perspective.

Something to reflect on, both about, you know, both for me and maybe for you as well, and just what gifts have we been given and what gifts have we given to others? And I think sometimes...

Maybe it's imbalanced and we give more to others than we receive. Or maybe we just think we give more to others than we receive because we're not paying attention to the gifts that we receive.

And again, maybe we're lacking in specific areas of gifts that we receive. Maybe, for example, me. I have a lot of friends. If I'm struggling with something emotionally, we'll jump on the phone and they will help me through the emotional thing. They will listen to me, they will ask me questions, and I feel very grateful for that. I don't have a lot of people in my life who are giving me money to get the things that I can get, that are easy for me to get if I had money, or easier for me to get than them if I had the money.

But I do have some people.

And in terms of opportunities to speak, I don't really have a lot of people giving me gifts of opportunities to speak, but I'm also not asking for it. And so just trying to reflect more on what types of gifts do we give what types of gifts do we receive how often do we ask for them how often do we even notice if we're receiving them and maybe what's the overall balance with it so taking the concept of cash flow and maybe this idea of like a cash flow statement from a business and expanding it to another level of dealing with more communal relationships and communal interactions and thinking, how are we already giving and receiving gifts from each other? And how could we do it more? And how could we be more aware of what we're already doing? So in that light, I think today is a relatively short episode, less than 10 minutes at least. And yeah, I just wanted to plant that seed for you. I'm planting the seed from me and trying to look at the world more from a perspective of gift flow than just purely cash flow and wondering if I and other people did that, how would it change the interactions in society? How would it change the shape or the fabric of society? If we started paying much more attention to the gifts that we're giving instead of just the cash that we are earning, whatnot. All right. Talk to you all tomorrow. Bye.