Reflections in a Shopping Mall

   Before tutoring session tonight, I had the thought in the shopping mall. My reflection was something like: here are dozens of shoppers, each with different needs and wants. What is the best gift that they can receive, whether in a mall or anywhere? And what is it that even strangers can give to each other? The one thing that came to mind is relaxed attitude is the simplest gift: the gift of non-reacting, simply being in the place of the moment without judging it or trying to be somewhere else.
    This doesn't sound like a very stupendous gift, but in a sense, it really is. The problem I see is that this isn't considered a gift, since people are continually trying to give more than who they truly are. This is how identification is formed with the things around us. For instance, I might attend a party thinking that the most important thing is the gift I bring to it, such a food or wine or other item. And I might become so absorbed in getting the perfect gift that I am no longer really there in that moment to receive people or even to be a guest. It is as though the act of giving has overshadowed the simple being that itself forms a kind of gift.
    What happens, though, is that people accumulate ideas about how they should be and what gifts to bring to others. No matter who I am I would always feel that there is something more I could be, and this something is what causes me to not be present. It is as though there were always some perfection around the corner. But if I realize that everything I do is just an expression of this single way of being that is always changing, would I think that there is a perfected self around the corner? Maybe then I would be more confident to know that there is nothing that needs adding. Even gifts are just expressions of a kind of vital and changing way of being.
    Sometimes even 'broken' gifts, unsent gifts, or incomplete ones are even more precious than so-called 'complete' gifts, because they point to something that is more eternal than what a gift is or embodies. There is something touching about a cracked gift, because the crack is what tells us that the gift itself is not as important as the intention behind it, the compassionate motive, or the open mind that originates the gift. The crack creates an empty space that opens up something else to arise. Have we ever experienced in relationships the notion of the empty space? That would be that place that nobody could ever predict about another person which allows new things to emerge, even endless possibilities. Without this tiny crack, there would be only a completed and self-contained form that is always what it is without new possibilities of expression. Could this gift be more precious than the perfection we seek in typical gifts or objects?