With the holiday season upon us, it feels appropriate to talk for a moment about gift giving. \u00a0As it so happens, I learned something interesting about myself this week, when I set up my daughter’s new computer.<\/p>\n
Bryanna’s birthday is at the end of August, and for her birthday, I offered to put together a new gaming computer for her. \u00a0The computer she had was old and slow, and was really past its end of life. \u00a0I’d done something similar for my son, Chris, and that had turned out to be a really fantastic project. \u00a0He wanted to build it himself, so I pretty much just offered guidance, supplied the budget, and stood by as a safety net while he put it together.<\/p>\n
Bryanna didn’t want quite the same experience. \u00a0She learned this year that while she likes computers, she doesn’t see a technical job as being in her future. \u00a0That seems fine to me, so once we got that straight, it was just a matter of me getting the parts and putting them together.<\/p>\n
I was really excited about doing this for her. \u00a0I enjoy putting computers together, anyway, but this was extra special, because I was putting it together for Bryanna. \u00a0I knew what a huge upgrade it was going to be for her. \u00a0I’d played some League of Legends with her on her old system, and we joked about it being a potato. \u00a0This was going to be fantastic experience.<\/p>\n
The parts came in on Tuesday, and I put it all together. \u00a0Bryanna was free to be as involved as little or as much as she wanted to be. \u00a0She seemed upset. \u00a0I got it put together for her, set it up, and she seemed wounded. \u00a0There wasn’t anything I could do or say that would make her smile.<\/p>\n
Bryanna and I have talked about this already, and it turns out she had just been having a bad day. \u00a0Her horrible reaction to the new computer apparently had nothing to do with the computer or me. \u00a0It was just bad timing.<\/p>\n
The problem was that I felt so horrible afterwards. \u00a0I felt like my heart had been cut out. \u00a0I’d been looking forward to the excitement in her eyes so much, and instead I found sadness and disappointment.<\/p>\n
The take-away from all of this is that I’m not quite as altruistic as I thought. \u00a0If I was altruistic, I wouldn’t need to get the positive feedback. \u00a0I needed it, though. \u00a0I needed to feel like I had done something good for my daughter. \u00a0When that need was not satisfied, I felt terrible.<\/p>\n
I’m not sure how to work on that, or if that’s even a problem. \u00a0I want to believe that I can rise above selfishness and do things for the benefit of others, purely for the benefit of others. \u00a0In practice, however, I’m seeing that I’m really just satisfying my own need to feel needed. \u00a0I wanted to give my daughter love and affection, and see it reflected in her eyes, so that I would receive love and affection in return.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With the holiday season upon us, it feels appropriate to talk for a moment about gift giving. \u00a0As it so happens, I learned something interesting about myself this week, when I set up my daughter’s new computer. Bryanna’s birthday is at the end of August, and for her birthday, I offered to put together a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":287,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions\/287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}