The Art of Receiving

I'm a giver, was always taught to share, and when I'm down to my last favorite potato chip, I'll gladly give it away to my wife. It's the pleasure giving evokes when you really love something, and you give it it away because the happiness of that said party makes you happier.

Giving makes the world a better place and perhaps is quite the curse because once you start, it's vicious to pull back and take a rest. And when you are good at it, well, that snowball can become an avalanche.

Generally my wife and I always for others, host parties, or cook for each other. We find things simply taste better when we do it...it's the curse of the self proficient and self important persona.

Enter last night as the most recent stint of getting spoiled as my wife and I sat at JP and Melly Mel's kitchen bar imbibing drink after drink, and we watched them cook us dinner. With each laborious luscious sip of a great Cotes du Rhone, the night slowed to a standstill where we were frozen in time while the busy whirring of kitchen appliances and chopping of mise en place progressed.

I kept thinking to myself with my wife connecting with me in step..."Boy, the food tastes different, and even sometimes better in a different way than when we cook. This sure is nice being spoiled...no cooking, no cleanup, and there is even a handsome man taking our empty glasses and filling them with a joyous liquid making me somehow forget my troubles as well as reservations and inhibations" (let's not forget Meg had craftily placed herself smack next to the decanter).

Although it is an art to give, and many ways a means to a way towards self recognition, self confidence, and improvement...it is also an art to learn to receive. To stop and say, "Hell yeah, I'll drink your booze, make tons of wonderfully inappropriate comments, and bust out in song and boozy tearful hug to tell you how much I love you"...is the balancing yin to the yang of life. The proverbial salt to the pepper, or perhaps gin to the tonic.

As life is the semblance of balance between gluttony and restraint, it's the small things such as wonderful friends cooking you dinner that helps you get the total perfect picture...helping conform the thousand photo snapshots into a montage that emulates beauty.