- The Poetic Edda
I was six when my mother first taught me how to cast the runes. One of the runes that I was most fascinated with - and also picked out most frequently - was Gebo. For the record, Gebo looks like a large X:
At times Gebo represents partnership, but its main symbolism is for gifts and sacrifices. When I was a kid, I found this apparent dual-nature fascinating and more than a little odd. How can something be both a gift and a sacrifice, I asked? Gifts are wonderful happy things. Sacrifice is painful and often bloody. Who would want to be given something that causes the giver pain?
As I grow older (and at least attempt to grow more mature), I understand this a little better. In the last ten years I've learned a lot about relationships (although only a fraction of what I'll learn in the next seventy, I'm sure). One of the things I've learned is that there are two main sorts of healthy relationships: the symbiotic and the epiphytic. (There are also the parasitic ones, but those are unhealthy and I'm not getting into them here.)
I understand that this classification sounds a little too scientific, a little too cold, but bear with me. I *am* a scientist, after all.
In biology, an epiphyte is an organism that lives off another organism. In some ways they are like parasites, but where parasites damage the host organism, epiphytes do not. Nor do they give anything back to the host. In comparison, a symbiote gives and takes, forming a mutually beneficial relationship with the host. (Actually, sometimes symbiotic relationships are balanced enough that neither organism can truly be considered the host.)
Day in, day out, we form epiphytic relationships with people. There's nothing wrong with that - indeed, it's the way things need to be. Some of these relationships are fleeting enough that you wouldn't consider them relationships at all - they're merely instances of human contact. In some cases you'll be on the taking side, and in others you'll be the giver, but never both. There's give-and-take, but it only goes one way.
That's not to say that there's no value in these relationships. Example: I walk down the street, and I see someone who looks a little frustrated, or sad, or just tired, and I give them a nice smile and hold the door open for them when they enter a shop. The smile makes them feel a little better, even if just for a few minutes. At the end of the day, maybe they forget - but maybe they remember that someone was kind to them, and it gives them a little glow of warmth, even if it's just a tiny one.
Epiphytic relationship. There's value there, but the important point is that it's a subjective value - it's only of value to the recipient, not the giver. To me, the smile and the door-holding is worth nothing. It cost me nothing. I chose to do it, but I could have chose not to and I'd have felt just the same.
As I say, there's nothing wrong with epiphytic relationships. They are both good and necessary, if we're to succeed as a species that intertwines as much as humans do. The whole concept of "Pay it Forward" (nice movie, terrible ending) was based on epiphytes. Do a nice thing for three people, even if it's just holding a door or helping an old person across the road, and then they'll do a nice thing for three more people, and so on ad infinitum. But what a person has to remember is that they are, by nature, shallow.
In a friend, or a lover, or especially a life partner, you need a symbiosis. To have any kind of meaningful relationship, you need to have a system of give-and-take that works both ways. It doesn't have to be completely equal all the time, but there needs to be some. All healthy personal relationships (as opposed to impersonal ones, with strangers or distant acquaintances) are symbiotic, although you non-scientists may not think of them this way. A true friend, or good partner, is someone you can lean on when you're weak, and cry on the shoulder of when you're sad, and ask for help when you need it - and who'll do the same with you.
I recently got out of a relationship that didn't have this. I loved Oli a great deal, and we had some very good times, but much of the time I felt unsatisfied. Because Oli was a giver, but completely incapable of taking anything in return. He wanted to take care of me, and give me everything I needed - or at least what he felt I needed - but couldn't ask for anything back, or accept it when it was offered. I don't know if he was just this way with me, or if he was like this with a lot of people, but I'm convinced that it's this, more than anything else, that wrecked our relationship.
As strange as it sounds, giving can be a selfish act if you do it exclusively. For one thing, when you only give and never receive, you keep everything on your terms. As a giver, you can choose to take away, and even if you would never do that the choice is still there. If you never take anything from the other person, they have nothing to offer you, and this ensures that you hold the balance of power. There is no equality. But that's not the only selfish thing about it. People need to give love - that's a simple fact of life. With very few exceptions (sociopaths, psychopaths, extreme narcissists), most of us need to give love more than we need to receive it. Watch a child with a teddy or a doll, or any person with their pet. (More examples of epiphytic relationships.) The child loves the doll, and gives that love in the form of hugs and playing and putting it to bed with a warm blanket. The doll doesn't love the child back, except in the child's mind, but that doesn't matter, because the pleasure is obtained from giving rather than receiving. With pets it's much the same story; while some of us will claim that animals are capable of love (and you can argue this until the cows come home - it's an argument that I'll stay out of) few of us will claim that pets, with the possible exception of dogs, are as loving towards their humans as the humans are towards them. Do the humans care? Not in the slightest, because like with the child and her doll, their pleasure is derived from giving love.
After spending three years as the receiver in an epiphytic relationship, I can tell you it's not a fun thing to be. For a couple weeks, even a couple months, it's pleasurable. It's nice having someone call you in the evenings to ask you how your day went, and having a person who'll make sure you're happy and taken care of. For me it was especially nice, because I've been the caretaker for my whole life (although my Mom always took care of my physical needs, when it came to emotions I've been responsible for her since I started walking and talking) and have had all too few people who wanted to look after me. But after a couple of months that role started to feel itchy, like a skin that didn't fit me, and since then I've struggled through a friendship - and sometimes sexual relationship - with a man who I loved dearly, but who made me feel totally superfluous.
The funny thing is that Oli would never have seen his behaviour as a form of selfishness. He honestly believed that he was giving me what I needed. He gave me attention and love. He provided someone to rant to or a shoulder to cry on when I'd had a bad day, and he found solutions to any problems that I had. He made sure I had enough money and he took care of all my sexual needs. He was an all-round decent, kind man - and not once did he ever cotton on, despite me telling him several times, to the fact that despite everything he gave me, I was thoroughly unsatisfied. What I needed from him was to BE needed. I needed to be useful.
Oli and I were very alike. Both of us were used to being the strong one. Neither of us liked letting anyone look after us, or see us vulnerable, and both of us found it very difficult to admit that we needed help. But what tore us apart was the fact that I was willing to bend, to compromise, in order to give him what he needed - the chance to care and protect and nurture - and he wasn't.
Gebo is the rune of gift and sacrifice. It now seems so strange to me that there was a point in my life when I didn't understand this. Of course gifts and sacrifices go together. They have to. Shallow, epiphytic gifts are all very well - they're the bread and water that the human race needs to survive - but a true gift, a gift with value to both the giver and the receiver, includes some sort of sacrifice, some surrendering of something important to you. A true gift costs you something.
A mother who has plenty of money and buys her children nice Christmas presents is a lovely thing to have, but a mother with limited money who gives up her daily frappaccino - her one indulgence - from August onwards so she can put the money in a Christmas present fund is a treasure. A friend who'll come over and hold your hand when you break up with your boyfriend, when she was coming over anyway, is nice. A friend who'll drop everything, including a hot date, to come on her only evening off and do the same is a rare gem. Our sacrifices allow us to show the people we love what they mean to us, to say without words that we are willing to give up something we want in order to make them happy.
I usually write an "In conclusion..." paragraph at the end, but this time I don't think I have one. I've said all I wanted to say. I live in hope that one day I'll meet a man who will give me what I need (and let me give him what he needs) rather than what he thinks I should need. A man who'll love me and trust me enough to allow me to see when he's hurting, and let me help if I can, or just be there if I can't. Of course, it would have to be the *right* guy. With a man who doesn't feel right to me, the best I can hope for is to improve his life just a teensy bit while remaining at a distance.
And I thank Oli for teaching me the value of compromise, and how much I'm willing to give up - a lesson which is precious beyond words.
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