Love Given Is Already Complete

Last week I gave someone I love a small gift. Nothing big. I just wanted them to know they were loved and that I’d been thinking of them. I didn’t question it for a second. It felt simple and it felt good, and that was that.

A few days later, I found out that someone else had given them almost exactly the same thing. Same idea, same impulse, same gesture. And theirs was noticed and celebrated in a way that mine wasn’t.

What really interested me was what happened in my mind next. Suddenly my gift wasn’t simple any more. I started comparing. Was theirs better? Was mine not quite enough? Did it matter less? Something I’d given freely, without a single doubt, had quietly been turned into a competition, and in my head I’d lost it.

I want to be honest that this only lasted a moment. After a lot of years doing this work, these moments are usually brief for me now. I notice the hook, I see what’s happening, and I can unhook myself fairly quickly. But I still get hooked. I think it’s really important to say that, because none of us are beyond it, and catching it isn’t the same as never feeling it. And I think we all do this, in all sorts of ways.

We give something from the heart, and it feels clean and whole. Then later something happens, maybe it isn’t acknowledged, maybe someone else seems to have given more, or better, or been thanked more warmly, and we go back and rewrite the meaning of what we gave. We look at it again through the eyes of comparison and decide it wasn’t good enough. Not because anything about the gift changed, but because we started measuring.

Here’s what I came back to. Love doesn’t cancel love out. It adds up. The person I gave to didn’t receive one gift instead of another. They received two. They got loved twice, by two different people, in the same week. When I let myself actually see that, it’s a really lovely thing. That’s someone surrounded by care. Why would I want to turn that into a contest?

My way of loving someone and another person’s way of loving them aren’t in competition. They don’t take anything away from each other. There isn’t a fixed amount of love that has to be shared out, where if someone else gets more of the credit there’s less left for me. That’s a scarcity story, and love just doesn’t work like that.

I think this scarcity thinking is behind so much of how we hold love back, both giving it and letting ourselves receive it. We hold back from giving because we’re worried about what it will say about us. Will it be enough? Will it be seen? Will it be returned? What if I give and it isn’t wanted? What if I look foolish? So we give a bit less, or wait to be sure it’s safe, or don’t give at all.

And we hold back from receiving too. We push love away when it feels like too much, or when it doesn’t come in the form we wanted, or from the person we wanted it from. We minimise it, or wave it off, or don’t quite let it land, because letting it in feels vulnerable.

But love isn’t something we have to measure, ration or protect. There’s always more of it. The other thing I was reminded of is that something given in love is complete the moment you give it. It doesn’t wait to be acknowledged before it counts. It doesn’t need to be the best one, or the biggest one, or the one that gets mentioned. It was love when it left me, and nothing that happens afterwards can reach back and make it smaller. Not how it was received, not whether anyone noticed, not what anyone else gave.

The part of us that likes to compare will always try to go back and re-judge it. That’s fine. We don’t have to fight that part. We can just notice it and remember what was actually true in the moment we gave. In that moment, there was no question. There was just love, and it was enough.

So if you’ve given something from the heart recently and then found yourself doubting it, wondering if it was good enough, or feeling a bit stung that it wasn’t seen, you’re allowed to let it be what it was. Love, given. That part is already done, and it’s already whole.

And if you’re on the receiving end of love from more than one direction right now, maybe let yourself enjoy that. You don’t have to choose between them or rank them. You can just be loved, twice, or three times, or as many times as it comes.