According to Emerson, if we must give gifts, they should be things that we buy for others, but rather things that are a part of us, things that come from the giver, not the giver's money. After all, anybody can buy something, but a gift that is made or that truly is a piece of the giver's identity is always unique. This reminds me of the present that I recently purchased for my friend's birthday. Mind you, I didn't think this up on my own, rather he specifically requested it. But now that I've got you wondering what it is, allow me to delay with some exposition. I've been a doodler for my entire life. Chances are, if there is a pencil in my hand, regardless of the environment or circumstances, I am probably drawing something. Whenever I draw something I particularly like I file it away in my pencil box, which I have had since seventh grade and which, by my friend's birthday, was full of all sorts of loose papers. His gift, then, was a compilation of all of these doodles complete with various explanations provided as attempts to explain them (such is the nature of my drawings that more often than not such explanation us highly necessary). On the surface, the whole thing cost me nothing, and so one could say that the gift was of low value. However, if you think about it, this gift had a handful of things going for it that might have make Emerson proud. Firstly, I made the drawings. In his essay on gifts, Emerson specifically encourages this, writing, "…Therefore the poet brings his poem, the shepherd, his lamb, the farmer corn…" and the list of examples goes on, perhaps needlessly so, but maybe he knew a bunch of specific people with the listed occupations whom he wanted to give ideas to (though probably not). If we wanted to add my gift to the end of the list, it might go something like "the doodler, his doodles." Secondly, the pictures actually show some real growth/passing fixations (including a large series of gnome pictures, perplexingly). I'd feel pretentious to say that the collection is vaguely autobiographical but I'm feeling especially pretentious already going on about my amazing gift so why not? This serves to make it more Emersonian, as he also writes, "The only gift is a portion of thyself". Thirdly and lastly, the items in the gift were originally created without any intention of ever giving them away. At first this might seem almost anti-giftish (if I may invent a word), because it suggests that the recipient was in know way a part of the process of creating it. But in this case, I'm going to suggest that it is the lack of thought that counts. I feel that giving away something you originally planned on keeping for yourself adds value to a gift. Instead of giving away something from a store, or something that you never got too attached to in the creation of, I was giving away something unique that I still wanted. Emerson himself comments that for a gift to be real, "thou must bleed for me". To put this all summarily, My friend (once again, I take no credit for coming up with the idea and even feared it was a pretty lame gift until reading Emerson) requested a gift that really was very Emersonian. The fact that he so enjoyed it serves to add proof to Emerson's claims. Especially now that we are approaching Christmas, we need to think about real, meaningful gifts, and this experience suggests that an Emersonian approach to the matter would certainly not be ill-advised.
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