I buy honey—golden and light from busy bees down the block—to gift my friends for the holidays and support a local business—while China negotiates with Saudi Arabia to weaken the US dollar and the Fed announces yet another interest hike.

I gift my husband with a warm—all organic, fair trade—cozy vest—and labor to find recipes fitting for a family feast while the world’s smartest minds still can’t figure out how to feed every child nor shelter every homeless body. Attending to basic human needs of all—still a perplexing bafflement to the smartest, smallest minds, as they smugly develop quantum computers, aggressively invade the human genome and arrogantly formulate: Mars Plan B.

I gift myself with a long walk under a glowing sun in crisp air that invigorates, bringing new life to weary lungs and limbs while Putin readies nuclear missiles and the US debuts a new, improved stealth bomber.

Our tiny tokens may make gifting seem futile for crafting any significant effect—like vapor, quicksand—in the midst of all this large-scale destruction—all this neglect of Life—all these unjust gifts no one wants; no one deserves—a gift exchange completely out of whack.

Yet common folk continue to open hopeful hands and give. Giving what we can in our small spheres to those in our circle. And quite simply, profoundly: We continue to do this because we love.

And because we know something destroyers don’t. In the vastness of our spirits, we know collective love does change things. The smallest of gifts from a generous heart contains within it a multitude of potentials.

We may never know what our small gift started. That doesn’t matter, really.

What matters is the gift—the final place where magic begins.

Copyright, Gloria DeGaetano, 2022. All rights reserved.

Photo Credit: Tierney Boggs