By: Cia Huston Dreves
Giving to one’s self is much like going to the well. In modern times we tend to take water for granted until and unless we are thirsty or dirty, or hot and parched. But water, literal water, is plentiful for us and generally no further away than the nearest faucet. But consider the well of our grandparents with its bucket or hand pump. Recall the wells of the ancients where the source of water for one was the source of water for all and treks to the communal well were difficult yet needfully frequent.
The well, of any size and in any age, provides water for cooking, for bathing, for drinking. The water is necessary for life and will be obtained at any cost. Wars have been fought over it and entire civilizations have crumbled to dust for want of it. Yet, for the most part, we give it no more notice than the air we breathe.
It is in taking the well for granted that we risk it running dry. And it is from lack of water from the well that each of us will wither and will die.
But what if the well is not dry? What if there is water in abundance and we don’t know the location of the well? Of what good is it to us then? Or, what if we know the location of the well but choose not to go? And why would we not go, because we are too busy, it is too burdensome, we believe that we have no need of it? What happens to us then? Our fate will be the same as if there were no well at all. We will grow weak and unless someone takes pity on us and brings us water, we will die.
So, it is not selfishness that has us return again and again to the well. It is self-preservation. It is what we give to ourselves that we might continue and, in times past, it provided an obvious metaphor to the living of our daily lives. We were both sustained and refreshed because we regularly drew water from the well. So why is it that in modern time we often find ourselves barely sustained and un-refreshed? Logic would dictate that as water is abundant in our lives, we would even more reap the rewards of it. How is it that we feel arid, unfruitful and parched? Why is there a sense of emptiness in our lives when our vessels are filled? How can guilt smother us like the dust of a thousand country roads and not be washed away when we have literal water in such abundance?
These are the questions that drive us to do good works, to seek purpose in deeds and charity and labor for others. These are the questions that position us to be the person who takes pity and brings water to the one who is languishing for lack of it. These, we believe, are the answers which will fill us and feed us and wash away the dust of our guilt. From right here we bring comfort to the grieving, food to the hungry, hope to the hopeless. From right here we give our tithes, our offerings, our time and ourselves. We can give and give until there is nothing left for us to give, until there is nothing left for us or of us.
But selflessness and altruism are good things. How can they consume us? How, in the midst of our giving and doing, can we return to thirst and emptiness and guilt and an unfulfilled desire for even more? How can this happen when there is no lack of water? Is the metaphor flawed? Not at all. The literal interpretation has just become more figurative although our understanding of it is still quite “present day”.
Today we don’t personally relate to going to an actual well. We no longer trudge with pottery jars or oaken buckets or pump a steel handle up and down. Though the water is today as it always has been, the difference is that we no longer have to do anything to get it. It seems reasonable that it was in the acts of going to and coming from and the labor of obtaining that we that we once recognized a truth…that the water itself was a gift from God and our obtaining it, regardless of how easy or difficult, in some way, acknowledged that gift. I was as if God had put a most elemental and necessary activity in our daily lives to teach us something.
In this simple moment of acknowledgement and accomplishment, of being given to and of our giving to ourselves, we were refreshed in spirit and renewed as individuals. In going to the well, we replenished our depleted resources. It was once a daily activity, right there in front of us and we understood it.
So where is this well today and how do we find it again? Some find it bound within holy texts. Others find it in recreation, music, gardening, or quiet meditation. My well is not your well and your well is not mine. It is less important where our individual well is found than it is that we go to it often enough to be continually refreshed.
If we are to be able to give to others, we must have something to give. Somewhere short of selfishness and before total depletion of resources, there is a middle ground, a point of balance upon which the actions of our daily life rests, like the balance point of a teeter totter. It is tempting to think that we might sit, immobilized, upon that center-point of safety forever; neither edging in one direction nor the other, but that immobility is neither life nor living; it is merely stagnation and death.
Our lives most often find us either tiptoeing or rushing headlong toward one end of the teeter-totter or the other. It is neither the speed nor the distance of that exercise that matters. In fact, it is a very custom-tailored aspect of our individual personalities. The danger is only when we linger too long at either end of the board while neglecting the other end. We risk either drowning or withering and dying of thirst.
Life affirming balance is achieved when we center ourselves with adequate attention to each direction. Whether we master the art of gracefully leaning a little this way and then a little in the opposite direction or personalize our stance with flying leaps and flourishes, it is finding our balance, our individual perfect center, giving to others on the one hand and going to the well for ourselves on the other hand that will sustain us, give us life and bring us joy.
Cia Huston Dreves enjoyed a 37 year career in Advertising as artist and writer before retiring. She has also written, directed and produced documentaries, published the How-To book “Find Cash in Your Kitchen” and maintains the blog, StillFindingCash.blogspot.com