Gift Paradoxes (Part I?)

  As I reflect on today's birthday, I am thinking about the nature of gifts. My brother always surprises me with gifts that I could never possibly expect---often relating to music that we have listened to in the last or when we were growing up. What's unexpected is that one of us might remember what another did not remember, and then we have to kind of give each other context clues (the time when we first heard it, the circumstances, and so on) to establish the place of that gift in our past. The gift is that of nostalgia or perhaps a shared childhood. But it's also a surprise, because memory has a way of being inconsistent across the same siblings, or even non-existent for one of the siblings!

  What's paradoxical about gifts, for me, is that they are both "surprising" and "not surprising". Think about it: gifts can never be random. I choose a gift for someone based on what I think I know about them, such as their tastes and clothing size. Gifts such as bath soap baskets at Shoppers Drug Mart or, worse still, Christmas cakes, are often held in contempt precisely because they mean little to the receiver, and are often seen as last-resort gifts. They become "standard cliches" for those who don't know enough about the person to be acquainted with their tastes. On the other hand, when a gift becomes too predictable, it too reflects a certain lack of thoughtfulness on the part of the giver. Sometimes one might even refer to such kind of a gift as "uninspired", precisely because it all too accurately reflects how a person self-identifies. 

    The best gifts always straddle the line between familiar and unfamiliar. The surprise aspect is that they sometimes extend the receiver's experience by introducing them to something completely new, which the giver discerns they may like. Gifts such as these involve risk--and may even involve a potential embarrassment to the giver if it turns out that the receiver feels uninspired by it. But I believe that people tend to see these surprising gifts as the most inspired, thoughtful and dialogic. These gifts allow the receiver to see something new in themselves as well as in the giver.