Is the gift really in the giving after all?

JAKARTA (JP): It's the thought that counts.

My mother used this as a telling admonition whenever I turned up my little boy nose at a gift from relatives or friends.

She repeated it solemnly when my grandmother sent me a technicolor pair of pants, a kaleidoscope of garish plaid and gingham which no self-respecting 10-year-old would be seen dead in.

I swallowed my pride and wore them anyway, despite the indignity of my sisters' gleefully calling me "Rupert Bear", the popular British cartoon character with similar sartorial flair.

Yet this didn't mean mom applied the same exacting graciousness to her own receipt of gifts.

Many was the time my father endured a verbal walloping or, worse, the silent treatment, for selecting a disliked color in clothing or an anniversary present judged unfitting.

These childhood experiences have always made me ponder whether the gift really is in the giving, or are we never really satisfied with what we get.

It is like the thorny issue of giving to beggars. I do it, despite my friends' telling me it is not "educative", but sometimes I wonder if it does more to puff up my ego than help out the needy.

That nagging question rose up and smacked me in the face once again during the recent Idul Fitri holiday.

Strapped for cash, I had decided to give small packages containing snacks and toiletries to the housemaids and garden boys who work at my lodging house.

Always fearful of committing a cultural misstep despite several years' residence in Jakarta, I had called the woman who runs the house to find out how many parcels to prepare.

Eight was enough, she had said, as several of the housemaids had already gone home for the Lebaran holiday.

The only quandary had been two new employees: To give, or not to give.

I asked around. Yes, said the landlady's assistant and several coworkers. After all, it would be worse to leave them out.

By 9 p.m. that evening, eight bulging packages were ready for pickup, and I was flushed with pride at my largess.

An hour later, the bubble had burst for Lord Bountiful.

The great comedown unfolded when one of the maids sidled into my room and spoke to me in a conspiratorial whisper.

"Did Mister give packages to the new boys?"

"Yes," uttered with beaming smile of pride.

"Well, Mister, you really shouldn't have."

Smile tightens, and look of bewilderment takes over.

"See, they're new here and it's kind of embarrassing for all of us, including the landlady, that you did that. They won't get a Lebaran bonus."

Smile gone but mumbled protestations follow -- "I asked around... I don't understand... that wasn't my intention..."

Pride most certainly comes before the fall, and in many cases after, and I really wasn't in the mood to have my failings served up before me for public consumption.

I was not a happy camper the next morning when I went to pay my phone bill to the landlady's assistant.

She perfunctorily dismissed my gripes by telling me "it has all been taken care of".

Huh??

"Well, the other servants took the packages from the new workers and divided them among themselves."

Excuse me? A raw nerve at the best of times, I was not in the mood to accept this ultimate "solution" to the mixup.

Fit to be tied, as in a straitjacket, would have been a better description.

I went a little overboard on the anger quotient -- major cultural faux pas, number two -- and would have had the office of the National Commission on Human Rights on the phone but for the assumption it was closed for the holiday.

I was ready and willing to recount my sniveling tale of woe to all and sundry -- colleagues, my boss, taxi drivers, even boyfriend of aforesaid coworkers when they couldn't make it to the phone.

Then a voice of reason spoke up and brought me to my senses.

"You shouldn't be so much of a people-pleaser," oh-wise one said. "Give if you want to give, and that should be enough. Don't get involved in how you want people to respond to your gifts."

And one more thing.

"Remember, people are never pleased with what they get, except one thing," he said.

"You'll never hear anybody complain about their brain size. That is the only gift we accept for what it is."

-- Frederick Vickers