the only essential is this: the gift must always move*
Lewis Hyde

Dazzling and tremendous, how quickly the sunrise would kill me, if I could not, now and always, send sunrise out of me.*
Walt Whitman

Some believe there can be no such thing as
an unconditional gift –
The giving provoking some kind of repayment – but
this is and isn’t true:
It is true inasmuch as a gift does prompt us to become a giver
(and then the gift changes, anyway),
It isn’t true insomuch as the gift is not to be repaid,
But paid forward –
It is always moving away from the original giver.**

*Lewis Hyde’s The Gift;
**The gift comprises the gift itself, the spirit of the gift, and the community of the gift. Whilst the gift may be “consumed”, the spirit and community continue. These comprise the story of the gift. Once a gift moves outside of the community of the gift then it becomes a commodity.