Reflection by Edgar Cahn
It was Christmas eve, and Mary Jane Huff was feeling empty. Her husband was away, working as a FedEx driver delivering packages. No doubt those packages included Christmas gifts, but still, he was gone.
Fed Ex is a commercial service, it’s purpose: to make money – so the absence of Eve’s husband, delivering gifts at such a special time for families, invites reflection.
Moving and packing might seem to be just about stuff. But it became about more than stuff when it enabled Mary to help out a terminal cancer patient and work with her side side by side. Their joint labor invested significance and meaning in tasks that might otherwise be dismissed as just one more thing to get done. The timebank exchange lifted Mary Jane as it also lifted her timebanking exchange partner.
Exchanges that involve giving and receiving are also transactions. But exchanges based on time, without regard for cost or price, can have a different meaning and a different value than transactions involving money.
An exchange based on time involves a gift. It creates the sense of relationship having a life of its own. And the relationship, giving rise to our meaning and purpose to life, is priceless. Transactions of the kind that involved Mary Jane with another timebank member on the day of Christmas eve answer the question we wake up with every morning: Why are we here?
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