I love to wrap presents. Wrapping Christmas gifts brings great joy! Enhancing a gift and making it even more special for the recipient is exciting! It is like foreplay is to intercourse. Fun, exciting and full of anticipation of what is to come. And sometimes it is even better than the gift…I am talking about the wrapping paper, you are thinking about sex!
Rejoin me here.
When I was younger, wrapping Christmas presents was a gift I could give my mom. She was busy. Working, raising 3 kids, preparing for the holidays, etc. Since I never like to spoil anyone’s joy at discovering what they were going to receive (no matter how much my brother and sister wanted me to!), my mom had no problem handing the task of wrapping over to me. One year, I convinced her to let me wrap my own gifts too. I told her that if she would just put them into unmarked boxes, I wouldn’t look. It took a bit of convincing but she finally agreed.
And I never peeked!
The thing is, I would have only been cheating myself out of the anticipation and surprise on Christmas morning.
This is one of my most treasured gifts from my childhood.
I got to experience joy from doing what I loved to do, creating a beautiful presentation for a gift that someone desired (or didn’t) and I got to add my creative touch on a gift that was for me. As I would wrap my own gifts with love and care and with just the “right” paper and bows, I allowed myself to be curious and imagine all the things the gift would allow me to do and have. I dreamed and fantasized. I anticipated and I learned patience. I wondered and I hoped.
Was I ever disappointed?
Sometimes. But not like you might think. It was like going to see a movie about a book you had read and loved. The movie is never quite as good because the image in your mind is not was is displayed on the screen. So sometimes the gifts weren’t as bright and vibrant or did all the things that my mind could imagine but I still enjoyed them just like I enjoy the movie.
Sometimes not. Sometimes the gift was even more than I could imagine. It was brighter and bolder and cooler than I ever thought possible!
That is how life has been for me. I love all my gifts because they are for me. Whether it is something that someone picked out for me or something that I asked for, I was the one that that gift was given to.
The coolest things I learned by wrapping my own gifts was that I could add my own creativity and imagination to them and that I got to be curious. I am always eager to learn something, the more unusual… the better.
The best part of wrapping my own gifts…
Learning to never judge them.
Lesson Learned
If they were exactly what I wanted and I love them, great. If they weren’t exactly what I dreamed of and I am disappointed, great. Either way, they are my gifts. They were given to me and I had input in creating them. They are a part of me. I added my touch. If I didn’t like the actually gift, I still loved the wrapping. If I did like the gift, it came beautifully wrapped. The joy isn’t in the gift itself but rather in the energy created in the moment of the anticipation, the excitement and the fun. That is priceless. Judging the gift never lets you remember this. It steals the joy. Never let anyone or anything steal your joy. Remain curious of what is to come and be, always.
