Nothing in this world is FREE!

Gifts...Gift's can be defined in many different ways.  In the American society, we have actual days of the year that we all expect gifts.  Christmas and birthdays are the worst.  We are suppose to be celebrating "life" but instead we all want to kill ourselves because we feel obligated to use all our hard earned money on someone we care about, then we suffer for awhile to get our lives back on track.  In my opinion, I would rather not receive anything because we all know that the other person is expecting something back.  If we don't get them anything, then well....they are somewhat sad and start throwing a fit because of what they didn't get. Give me a break.  I do believe in getting people gifts that they can use everyday or that is very practical.  We spend so much time trying to out-spend each other but we always, always, always, forget what the true meaning of it all is.  I believe that "Kwanzaa" is the way to go.  Kwanzaa is an African American and Pan-African holiday celebrated between Christmas and New Year.  Reason being, you celebrate Christmas without any materialistic things interrupting your day, you only give gifts if you can afford them so you don't put yourself in a jam, the dates between Christmas and New Year are so you hit the sales that all the department stores have, and finally you only buy gifts that are useful in educating the mind, body, and soul of an individual.  It's clean cut and dry and to the point.  That's just my opinion though.  Even when your parents buy you a toy when you are little that involves sports, for instance, they still expect you to use whatever they bought so they can see some form of progression.  That is still not FREE.  There is no such thing as an unselfish good deed.  We still feel better about ourselves in the end!

I believe that there is a such thing as a free gift- but maybe that's just because I'm cheap. Sure, when I was younger I would always expect gifts at special events like my birthday or Christmas, and I'd reciprocate the gifting because it was polite- but more so because it was not coming out of my own money but instead my parents'. Back then, I never had to worry about what to get someone for their birthday or bar/bat mitzvah or wedding or whatever because money was not an issue. Times have changed, however, for now I am as broke as college students come, and in the rare occasion that I do get someone a gift it must be for a really good reason. This might sound selfish, but then again, when did giving gifts become so mandatory?

Not all gifts are free. Of course, if a friend gets you something really, really nice for your birthday then you are morally obligated to get them something equally nice for their birthday. If you don't get them anything, that's probably really rude of you and you should feel bad about the fact that your friend wasted lots of money on a friendship that they believed to be worth more than you. But wait a minute... friendship can't be measured in gifts. If it is, you're in a pretty shallow relationship for all the money you're spending on gifts. Then again, if you have the money, heck, go for it. You might get something really special in return.

I'm biased because I literally have no money to buy anyone any gifts these days. I'll make someone a gift if they really mean a lot to me. Otherwise, fuhgeddaboudit. Call me rude, call me inconsiderate, whatever. I would do just fine without receiving another tangible gift as long as I live if it meant I didn't have to worry about the stressful obligations of gift giving. Take Christmas for example. Who actually enjoys Christmas shopping? Maybe some people do but that is the last thing I would want to look forward to on a freezing cold day in December in a whirlwind of crazy holiday shoppers and their obscene materialist appetites.

We shouldn't give gifts because we are obligated to. We should give gifts because we want to, not because we expect something in return.

a gift for a gift

Whenever anyone mentions free stuff I can’t help but perk up a little, but there’s usually always some kind of catch or an expectation for you to give something in return. Last Wednesday for example I went grocery shopping at Jewel’s and right when I entered this guy shoved some poster of Chicago into my hand and told me it was free but when I walked away he started asking me to sign up for this newspaper for only $1. Since he had given me this free poster he expected something in return-a gift for a gift. I kept walking though and I did make it out with a free poster but in a way I still felt obligated to sign up for the newspaper. Giving gifts has turned into a way to get what you want. Even as a child I used gift giving for the sole purpose of getting something in return. Whoever gave you a gift for you’re birthday you would automatically get them a gift for their birthday even if you didn’t like them, and vise-a-versa. Also, depending on what they gave you would determine if you got them a cool gift or just a generic gift. I don’t like getting gifts a lot of the times because I feel like I have to repay that person in some way.

generally I do not think that there is any such thing as a free gift, but I do think that there are some exceptions depending on who is giving you something and what it is. When I left for Chicago one of my good friends gave me this little star wars toy to take with me and even though it’s something silly it means a lot to me because it reminds me of back home and all my friends and all the crazy fun times we had together. That’s probably one of the only times when I received a gift and I didn’t feel obligated to give back something in return.

To give a gift or not give a gift... that is the question...

In this society in which we live in there is no such thing as a "free gift". Whether it's a birthday parties, weddings, baby showers, graduation parties and other holidays, gifts are given as obligation. With obligation, gifts can be given to express rank or provoke jealously amongst others. Like America's traditions, the article refers to two other tribes that share similar reasoning's for giving gifts.

"America Northwest, Melanesia and others, where emulation is more moderate but where those entering into contracts seek to outdo one another in their gifts."

Sharing the holiday's with a mother and father whom are divorced will find that competition between gifts is likely. This results into their childhood choosing whom they like more based on the value of a gift. Like the tribes in the article, gift giving has resulted into killing one another. While giving gifts can cause controversy, so can receiving them. Like the article states,

"To refuse to give, to fail to invite, just as to refuse to accept, is tantamount to declaring war; it is to reject the bond of alliance and commonality."


In the household I've grown up in, when receiving gifts as a child I would be greatly appreciative. As I've grown up I've veered away from personally expecting gifts. I do give gifts only to a few of my loved ones with only good intentions.

What goes around, comes around.

I think there is such thing as a free gift.  However, very rarely does someone receive a free gift.  I say this because I would consider a free gift to be something that is given to someone by a person who has absolutely no expectations of receiving anything in return.  Unfortunately, we don't come across many people willing to do this.  

I would also consider kindness and love to be a free gift.  When someone loves someone else unconditionally, they often care for them despite maybe not receiving the same affection in return.  It is rare, too, to find someone who is kind to someone else because of unselfish reasons. Many times it seems as though people are kind to others in hopes of receiving some sort of recognition.  

More often than not, we read stories in the newspaper or hear stories on television of the horrible and selfish things people do.  Even as a child, these stories always made me so sad to think that people could be so evil to one another.

My mother told me a true story a few years ago that really (I know this sounds lame) gave me hope that there are still people out there that are kind and genuinely loving.  The story she told me is this: 

A man was driving down the highway on a cold and very rainy evening and saw an elderly woman pulled over to the side of the road due to a flat tire.  He pulled off the road to help her.  he cheerfully and efficiently changed her tire for her and gave her the number of a place where she could get the tire fixed.  The woman was very appreciative and insisted on giving him some money in return for his troubles.  The man told her that it was no trouble at all and to keep her money.  He told her the best way for her to pay him back was to do something kind for someone else.  The man left and the woman was very touched by his kindness.  On the way home, the woman stopped at a small diner to warm up and get something to eat.  Her waitress was a young, very sweet and happy,very pregnant woman.  The elderly woman could not stop thinking about what the man had said to her.  So when the woman finished her meal, she paid her bill, left her waitress a generous $100 tip, and left four additional one-hundred dollar bills on the table for the waitress.  The waitress went home later that night, grateful that now her and her husband could pay their rent and buy a crib for the new baby.  She explained to her husband, in tears, how kind it was of the elderly woman to leave her this money.  Little did the elderly woman know, the waitress was the wife of the man who had helped her earlier that morning.

The idea that this man had not asked for anything in return for his kindness, but in the end was still rewarded, solidifies the notion that the things we do, good or bad, will always find their way back to us.  

Free gifts are given to us when we, ourselves, are willing to give free gifts.  To me, this idea is almost comforting and I wish that more people really understood and cared to be sincerely, unselfishly kind.

You can't spend it when you're dead

The saying "time is money", to me, means "I care so much about money that every second you waste of my time means another penny lost". We live in a time where money is never tucked too far back in our brains, especially college kids with bills, rent, tuition, or groceries; when is our life not somehow revolving around money? I can personally say that if I were to constantly spend every moment away from school working, I would surely look back on my college years with regret. After all, these are the years we're supposed to be broke, right? I like to spend my extra time living; Of course I work also, but not as much as I could. I'd rather head to the nearest park with a good book, or pack up my stuff for the weekend and roam around in the woods. To me "Time is living", if we're lucky enough to be alive, we should spend that time doing things we love, things that won't have us laying in our death beds with regret. Money is just money, sure it will get you a few things while you're alive, but you can't buy adventure, or love, and you certainly can't buy life.

Abiding Time

Time gives us structure, it measures each day sunrise to sunset, from week to month to year. It provides us a sense of relative place according to the movement of bodies large and small. The physical concept only applies to thinking creatures. Otherwise, it is simply increments of physical change multiplied by how much change. Times is, above all, a cause of order, so that we know how to adjust our activities based upon constraints within a change according to day light.

Similarly, Muslims, as my friend from Morocco explains, respect a lunar calendar according to which Muslims are asked to pray by the Qu'ran. Prayer times are determined per region of the world according to the movement of the sun, not a clock. This has been a traditionally a constant determinant of prayer times for Muslims and is more specifically calculated by factors like the Earth's orbit, tilt, and rotation.

Adapting to the "American" lifestyle by which Americans life their daily lives is difficult for Muslim people because a number of inherent factors of the lifestyle: work, leisure, meal time, and sleep time are extremey irregular and work can often overwhelm the others. No time is widely allowed to employees in the U.S. for religious ritual. For example, Dell Computer fired 30 Muslims for praying in the workplace (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb5554/is_200503/ai_n21850388). It seems from some research that the Workplace Religious Freedom Act was last considered by congress in 2007. The act would give employees whose religion mandates prayer the right to reasonably practice religious rituals as long as they do not "impose an “undue hardship” upon the employer" (http://www.ou.org/public/statements/bg/wrfa.htm).