Gift Of Promise In A Box

I heard this expression from a friend of mine. She said she was waiting for her ‘gift of promise.’ I said are you waiting for an expensive piece of jewelry, a new car or a fur coat?

Ballroom dancing is like a gift of promise or a promise of a gift. The gift being the satisfaction we get from accomplishing all we can when we learn to dance or continue to dance afterwards. My husband and I started out almost thirty-three years ago to take a set of ten lessons for an event we were having the following year. I wanted to be able to get up and dance at this affair with dignity and finesse and to have lots of fun celebrating my son’s Bar Mitzvah party. In reality, I wanted to show off my dancing abilities.

So we took a set of ten lessons and we stayed in the dancing world for this length of time. Time goes by fast as we age and before we know it, it is September and I have already seen advertised on television, items for Christmas 2013. This is a bit early but only proves that time marches on and if we are lucky, we march or dance with it.

On June 18th of the year 2008, my husband and I were injured severely by someone in a car who was texting and not keeping his eyes on the road. He ran a red light and crashed into our car leaving the car almost gone and our ribs and bones and shoulders and back quite injured. We went to the emergency room of a local hospital where we each had chest x-rays, EKG’s and he had a cat scan of his stomach. We were there a long five hours in excruciating pain and suffering. People who through their own negligent thinking and lack of control to text or cell phone call are doing a great disservice to others, innocent people, who happen to be at that spot when they are doing this harm to the general public.

The gift of promise mentioned above should be in all of our minds. We should be giving the promise to behave towards others as we want to be treated. We should not use our cell phones while we are driving, we should not text while we are driving and we should be promising ourselves to be diligent in the treatment of others’ lives. We should not harm others because we are impatient to call or talk or message. We should be caring enough humans to realize how precious life is to our self and to others, even strangers on the road.

There is a thought in psychology stated as put the bad things you encounter out of your mind and then store them in a box and put the box away. Also, I would note that you can do the same with the good events. Put the good events/ thoughts about to happen or that has happened in a box and keep them out in your clear vision. I decided to do something different. When I wake up in the morning, I take a pad of paper and I write down the occurrences I expect could or hope will happen that day.

Even if it is expecting a special magazine in the mail to come, or going to the mall to buy a shirt or blouse, I put it down as an anticipated or foreseeable episode that I hope will happen. Some things expected or hoped for may be simple and plain things like the magazine or they could be exciting things like the birth of a new grandchild, the arrival home of a child who has been away for many months. They could even be envisioning going to a dance several weeks from now. I have always felt that anticipation is half the delight of something wonderful about to happen; whether it is today, tomorrow or six months from now.

Dancing has always been my vision, before I learned to dance well, after I danced splendidly and even when unable to dance as is now, because of Arthritis in my knees; it is still a delicious thought and also a gift of promise.

When we found out in January of 2005 that my son and daughter-in-law were expecting their first child and our third grandchild the exhilaration of that momentous announcement was so glorious. I remember the date they told us that, we were sitting in a restaurant having an early dinner out of state where they reside and I was so happy and tearful that I could hardly eat the food. We had been expecting the announcement for a while and when it did not happen, we knew it would come soon.

That day I did not think about it happening and when it did, there were no words from me, a writer, which I could express without tears. Anticipation can be the excitement beforehand and hope can be the excitement before the anticipation. Added together, the event whatever it is will be the phenomenon. Any phenomenon does not have to be a world event, it can be a simple pleasure designated for you and your family or you alone.

Putting away the bad thoughts in a ‘box’ in a locked drawer will eliminate bad mood happenings and putting the good events in a box is like

storing your jewelry in a special container. You may not look at the jewelry often, but it is there awaiting your perusal. Going on a vacation is wonderful but anticipating it many times is just as lovely. Preparing for an event and finally attaining it are two components of a good time.

So the gift of a promise or the promise of a gift is a good slogan to keep in your mind. Remember that you must always gift yourself because you are special. My mother always said that as a child and a teen and then as an adult, that I loved to give as much as I enjoyed receiving. She said that giving spirit of mine made me into a special person. Of course, she was prejudiced.

Now as a senior adult, I still like to reward people that have been good to me with special gifts, a piece of inexpensive costume jewelry to a person working in an office who took time out to care about me in one way or the other. Right now I am on my way to pick up some freshwater pearl bracelets in various colors. I keep them on hand as a gift of promise to give nice ladies in doctors’ offices or elsewhere when they go out of their way in their work to honor me by helping me out with a request for an appointment or some other reason. They are usually thrilled and fascinated that I do this. You tip the waiter or waitress, why not reward a person doing something extra for you outside of the restaurant; perhaps in an office you are visiting for a reason of health or otherwise.

Receiving is fine, giving is also excellent. It makes a person feel satisfied to maybe bestow a small kindness in the form of a material possession. It makes the receiver know he or she is the recipient of a form of thank you. Many people nowadays do not know how to say thank you verbally or in a note.

Thank you verbally is the most inexpensive expression one can say. Eight letters in the two words conveys a proper and appropriate response. Gift yourself with a promise to try and be happy, to always say thank you and most of all to respond to kindness by giving a gift of yourself to someone, even a stranger by saying pleasant niceties and the promise of a mental reward will be yours. You can put this into your box and know it a promise of a gift to yourself. This will make you feel quite special and so you really are and most of all, you comprehend that life is a gift and we promise our self to appreciate it and to try and value it every day.

Last night, we were eating our dinner in a fine diner we go to most every Friday night. After a while, you see the same folks doing what you are doing and you get to know them by their first names. One of the ladies, a lovely looking woman named Judy was walking to the restroom and stopped by to chat with us. She looked at me and said “you always look so beautiful and so well put together.” I was almost going to tell her that she had just given me more than a gift of promise. She had given me verbally a delightful, kind and caring thought to store in my gift storage box, the imaginary one, yet a real one. I thanked her and the aura of it shall remain with me for a long time.  

Next week, when we see her, I have bought her a small gift for making me feel very special last night. It did not cost a lot of money, but it is a token of the ‘gift of words’ she gave to me. It is not necessary for me to do this, I want to and then she too will have a gift from me. She herself is a radiant looking person, always with a smile on her face. I shall write her a note and tell that to her. Then she will have a gift for her box, one verbal and one of material worth. We can all be gift givers of inexpensive gifts or words that cost us nothing.