when someone is kind

This is what it feels like when someone is kind or generous toward me: Imagine someone you respect and admire very much. It could be a good friend or a mentor or a relative. This is a good person, a real mensch. Someone who embodies qualities you hope to develop one day. Now imagine encountering that person on a day on which he or she is wearing a unique and precious heirloom. A watch, maybe, or a bracelet. Or a gossamer merino scarf in rich colors. Something beautiful and absolutely one-of-a-kind. Irreplaceable, and replete with stories and heritage. You see your cherished friend and she is wearing her lovely scarf and you tell her, "That is such a lovely scarf!" She smiles and then takes off her scarf and winds it around your neck and tells you, happily, that she wants you to have it.

Do you feel the dread, the panic, the sense of heartbreak and loss? You want to stop her, to tell her "No! Please. This is not mine and I can't possibly wear this beautiful thing. I didn't mean for you to give it to me. I simply wanted to admire it on you--" But how can you say that? How can you meet such generosity with ingratitude? "You misunderstood me," you want to say. "I wasn't asking for anything." But you can't say that either because you have always admired her style and judgment. Which is more/less bearable, to think she misunderstood and misjudged or to think that she truly means to give a gift the worth of which you cannot fully comprehend?

Do you feel your own stinginess and poverty as you know yourself to be unable to give comparable gifts? Are you afraid she will regret the loss of something so beautiful and so rare? Are you worried that the scarf, the watch, the kindness will not fit with your typical style? If it doesn't fit, what will you do? Will you shove it to the back of your closet or deep inside a drawer you rarely open so that you can try to forget about it? Will you clasp the beautiful thing around your wrist or wind it around your throat even though your own wardrobe looks shabbier next to your friend's generous gift? Or will you have to change everything even though it costs more than you have?