Leading With My Left

"What would you like for [insert special occasion here]?"

"I don't want anything."
Translation: "Use your imagination. I'll treasure anything you give me, if it's from your heart."

As you may have already discerned, I'm not big on receiving material gifts, at least of the store-bought variety. Over the years, I have learned that too many people just don't have the knack for gift giving.

My family always gave me incredibly thoughtful gifts, things that they had observed I needed throughout the year but would not acquire for myself, or accouterments that I would consider luxuries in my somewhat voluntarily minimalist existence. My dearest friends sometimes enjoy making gifts, original little works of art imbued with love. I treasure each of them, these gifts from the heart.

This kind of gift giving is intuitive. Being raised in an intuitively giving environment, I've become quite adept at it, and I strive to seek out the unusual, hard to find, and thoughtful gift when the need arises, and sometimes just for the fun of it. Not everyone can give intuitively, granted, but some people are just too lazy to do it.

A fellow I once dated asked what I wanted for my birthday. "I don't want anything." So what did he get me? A pair of hiking boots. Romantically challenged, perhaps, but it's the thought that counts.

A man I was engaged to, in response to "I don't want anything," liked to give me two pieces of very expensive jewelry for each special occasion, and I could choose and keep the one I liked best. Invariably, even without knowing how much he had spent on either of them, I selected the one that was less costly, and this amazed him. I explained that it was incidental; I chose the ones I did because he either had a hand in the piece's design, or he went to great lengths to obtain it. Simply put, there was more of him in it.

I knew a family whose practice it was for their son to submit a monumental list of material things he wanted for Christmas. It was not unusual to receive a list with 30 or more items on it, a majority of them quite expensive. The son, in accordance with his family's practice, would pester me for a list every year. "I don't want anything." His family would always persist until I relinquished a list, thereby absolving them of any creative responsibility.

One year, just to shut him up, I came up with the most outlandish gift idea I could muster under pressure: I told him I wanted a punching bag. So he immediately went out and bought me a punching bag. (Did I really want it? No.)

For several years it sat in my mother's basement, unused, serving as the butt of a different joke for each of us – for him, my recalcitrant reluctance to exercise with it, and for me, well, just the fact that he bought it in the first place.

After my return to Georgia, I actually did start using it a bit as my strength and schedule allowed. Today's workout prompted this post, in fact. I've observed that while I could inflict some serious damage with a right punch or kick, I'm still a little weak on my left side. I think if I continue leading with my left for a while, I can achieve a better balance of strength.

I think left is underrated. I contemplate some of the relevant lefts in my life: left brain, left eye, and left hand; direction, intellect, spirituality, and politics. I recognize that each of these serves as half of a micro-balance, and those balances, along with countless others, contribute to the macro-balance of being.

Balance is good, but it requires a lot of work. It doesn't just happen on its own. So, I'll start small, with the punching bag.

Hello, left.