My favorite book on vocation is Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak. I recommended it to someone the other day, and I just came across this quote from the book:
“When the gift I give to the other is integral to my own nature, when it comes from a place of organic reality within me, it will renew itself—and me—even as I give it away. Only when I give something that does not grow within me do I deplete myself and harm the other as well, for only harm can come from a gift that is forced, inorganic, unreal.”
What do you notice about how you are giving to others lately? Are you depleted or being renewed?