Finding joy in giving — giving extravagantly, giving joyously

Occasionally, I order a dozen Saldanha oysters from a local merchant. They’re an indulgence. A small one. They cost R160, but it feels extravagant. I could tell you of their mineral content, but the truth is the extravagance is the joy. The bonus — the merchant runs her own small business. Her supply chain, local fisher families. My meal, their meal.

In Zia Haider Rahman’s In the Light of What We Know, he quotes a line from Graham Greene’s Travels with My Aunt. It reads: “It is well to have a few memories of extravagance in store for hard times.” I choose to trust him; it is too beautiful not to use.

This is a time for making memories, of giving gifts, of rest and festivity. Yet, if you’re like me, this December might feel like a Sunday evening before an unwanted Monday-morning red-eye flight. What good is December if we can’t face what lies beyond? We’re desperate for rest. We want extravagance’s escape. Yet, underneath it all, we wonder whether we can risk it, not because our bank balances can’t afford it but because we don’t know whether our souls can. We know that, as we desire joy, others have none.

Just a heartbeat ago we had hints of hope. We and others hoped new presidents would rescue us. They haven’t. Some have taken us to war. Others support war. We watch children die and vitriol lie. When the pandemic started, historians cautioned that, without care, fascist impulses would stir, wars would start. We didn’t listen. We are here. Again.

Oxfam tells us 2 153 of us have more wealth than 4 600 000 000 others of us.

It helps, I think, to see the zeros. There’re eight of them. India, China, and all of Africa, just about 4.6 billion, combined. Two thousand? A rural village. A rural village richer than half the world.

This year, Bachman’s warbler, the bridled white-eye of Guam, and eight species of Hawaiian honeycreeper birds were declared extinct. Before them, the Chinese river dolphin, the ivory-billed woodpecker and, of course, the dodo. Countless others. You might not know the names, but you know it is happening. How do we create memories of extravagance in this world? Live we must, but how? How do we contemplate joy when there is so much despair? We do so because we must. It is the lifeblood, the blessing that we need. We must remember joy and create joy, for without it, what is left?

Our joy is survival, our joy is political, our joy is revolutionary, our joy is healing. The hard times are here. We need gifts that shine against the dark. And what is extravagance in this world? It seems to me that when we give in excess what is scarce, it is extravagance. Humanity, kindness, attention, silence, gentleness. And, yes, pleasure. Pleasure for its own sake. In this utilitarian world where all is “results-driven”, to give pleasure is an extravagance, even more transgressive than the phrase ever implied. Give other extravagances. Give attention to yourself and others. Make people feel seen and help them succeed. It gives them memories. Give kindness every day. Make each day memorable. Remember, they become memorable when you stop to remember. The world may seem rigid. You can soften it. Give it love. Yes, love. Hearts melt, and so can the world.

Know too, what you need. Over the pandemic years, I became convinced I needed a quieter life. I sold my city home. I’d lived there for nine years. Before that I had moved home 12 times in 16 years. When I bought it, I was determined never to move again and yet change came. After a year of uncertainty, we moved to a seaside village. We’re at its edge, beyond it is the world that always was. And beyond that, thousands of miles away, Antarctica clings to its ice.

Here, having less is the extravagance. Fewer buildings, fewer people, a smaller house that we don’t own. All much less. All more extravagant. We live mostly in silence. We start days watching the ocean and its creatures. I end it, in it. These are extravagances. Once all of us had them, but now nature is buried, and silence is nowhere.

Even now, my mind runs; it’s on city time, on must-perform time. I’m asking it whether we might find a quieter way. To have a mind quiet enough to remember, quiet enough to hear myself — what an extravagance that would be. Our most ancient technologies, wisdom encoding thousands of experiments, observing failure and catastrophe, tasting joy and freedom, tell us to love one another, to give graciously, that kindness connects us to the eternal.

Even older technologies tell us that the divine flows through all life, that to honour the divine is to honour all that is. In that world, the divine is indivisible. Our every action counts. We are the demon-makers or the angel-callers. Us. We create heaven. Or hells. So, yes, in this hard time, create memories of extravagance. We need them.

• Karl Gostner is an executive and business coach.

• From the December edition of Wanted, 2023.