A tiny amount (of something, especially something valuable or just something that you wouldn't want to give out any more than a small part of, like—perhaps—a valuable stock, a season ticket plan, a country, or the like).
As it gets close to Christmas, we'll have two posts about gift ideas for the late-shopping crew. This is one, and it's a little different than usual.
Quartz has a thoughtful, great compilation "gift guide" where 40 people tell what the best gift they received was and why. The responses are wonderfully human, like the introduction by Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson:
Most gifts follow a certain arc: initial excitement, followed by a gradual fading of utility until the gift is worn out, lost, or a memory. But great gifts are the ones that increase in value over time, the ones that break through the noise of an ephemeral age.
The gift that stands out for me is the gift of education. It took my father seven years to make it through a state school, and by the time I was able to go to college at Duke, my dad told me he was going to find a way to pay for it, despite already stretching the limits of a generous financial aid package.
It was there that I received one of many gifts of inspiration, given to me by my friend Trent (then my professor) in a class called “Beatniks, Bohemians, and the Novel.” It was there that he assigned Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and I first read a sentence that still dances in my mind like poetry, reminding me of the amazing people I’ve met in life:
“…the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…”
The best gifts are like those roman candles, giving light and wonder to our lives.
Go look at the whole thing. Then let's all think about what we're giving and why.
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