Recently Winston Churchill’s famous quote once again came to my attention: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”
And I thought: isn’t that true.
That is all I have to offer.
My heart. My mind. My labor. My love and attention. My body. My breath. My energy. My presence.
Isn’t that all any of us really has to offer?
Everything else is simply a form that those things take. Money is labor stored. Gifts are attention made visible. Service is time given away. Care is love embodied. Even our accomplishments are the result of our blood, toil, tears, and sweat.
The self is the only currency we truly possess.
And this forms the basis of relationship. We offer one another of our Selves. And we honor receiving that offering of personhood, of body, of spirit. The intertwining of our Selves, the holding of the other, becomes the bond.
What an extraordinary, beautiful thing that is.
We use one another—not in the cynical sense, but in the sense that life itself is interdependent. We rely on one another. We need one another. We feed off of one another. Sometimes literally like an infant and a mother. Sometimes energetically. We crave one another.
This is not a defect in human behavior. It is one of its fundamental beauties.
At the same time, there is tension and anxiety woven in there. Will I be honored, cared for, remembered, protected? Will my gift be recognized as the piece of my Self it is? Will it be received with the reverence it deserves?
To love someone is to allow, even to sacrifice a portion of your own blood, toil, tears, and sweat to another. To receive love is to accept the gift of personhood and life offered to you.
We are braided into one another’s lives through thousands of acts of giving and receiving.
Dependence and attachment are not problems to transcend. They are fundamental to the condition of being human. How very beautiful and marvelous that is.