Falling into a
creamy cappuccino (figuratively speaking) is something I rarely do but oh how
it embraces the soul and makes me feel good for a few moments, when I do. That
is what I realized yesterday, as I celebrated reclaiming my life with Darls in
a quaint Italian café house in my local near by village and all on a fantastic
gift voucher given to us over a year ago.
Gift vouchers
are an item you are given for example at birthday times, Christmas or as a
thank you gesture perhaps. Often due to you then having to acutely go out and
cash them in, at a place you normally would not venture, they find their way
into a dark draw, pinned onto a cork board or left lying on the hallway table.
Gathering dust, until as you clear some room for another item, they pop up
reminding you it has either expired or giving you a guilty feeling of not being
at the time “pro-active” and using it.
I have a few of
these little treasures in a folder and as at the moment I am redirecting my
life (my New Years resolution for 2016) I have decided I will acknowledge their
potential NOW. The ones that are still open by me are for a thermal bath
entrance, breakfast for two at an Italian café and a voucher for whatever I
want from a local reform store. All of them allow me to give myself something I
actual love, so I wonder why I have left them over the years to gather so much
time on their dates of issue? Lucky for me they are all still valid.
I myself have
over the years also provided friends with the typical gift voucher for
purchasing that book they would like and not my novel choice. Or a cinema pass
so they could view the movie they wished too or a money voucher for cashing in
at your favourite shop, on treats you would not normally buy. At least that is
what I envisage when I have purchased the voucher. Yet once my Darls mentioned
he wouldn’t make the effort to actual go alone to an activity or remember to
have it in his wallet when purchasing items at the given shop I have changed my
strategy a bit.
I now give personalized
“gift vouchers of time”. I purchase a lovely card and write that I will for
example go to the movies, art exhibition, have a picnic breakfast on a scenic
mountaintop or do an event of your choosing with you. I ask only that within a
month of receiving my gift voucher, you set the date so I can do the
organizing, including picking you up and taking you, for whatever your gift
voucher is. That way the gift is really that – a treat for you. The bonus is
not only it is actual used but rather that I can be part of what I give and see
it really giving pleasure to the one I gave it to.
I have time to be
with the receiver of the gift voucher as well and this is really important. Hence
the gift of “time” is given in this manner. It is what actual never exists in
our world today right? “I have no time, I can’t find time even to do that? I
seem to never have enough time” are regular statements issued by us all. So
giving your time for a defined action or event is a gift, which holds immense
value. It shows you care about the person. It shows you will make time for that
person and it provides both you and the receiver a space in which to create memories
of having that special time together that would otherwise not have been.
You could think
of this form of giving as “vouching for your gift” within a set space of time
and participating in its actually being used. Perhaps you too would love to try
this form of giving out in 2016 and see how it can expand your gifts into real
moments of delight for the receiver, as well as you.
Warmest
regards, your Korus