'Tis the Season to Cling Tightly to My Possessions

Ever since I heard the story about Joseph F. Smith giving away his new coat to someone who needed it more than he did, I’ve always wanted to be generous like him. In fact I’ve had a fixation with looking for someone shivering to give my coat to, but I’ve never had much luck. Despite my inability to find someone to give my old coat to, I’ve always figured that there wasn’t anything I couldn’t let go of if I really needed to. Whenever I heard stories about either a pioneer or a holocaust victim going to great lengths to protect or sacrifice something they considered their most cherished possession, I’d try to put myself in their shoes but nothing ever seemed to come to mind as my most cherished possession. Thus I told myself that I could be quite generous if I ever needed to be. Then an email from my father-in-law exposed my selfish and shallow tendencies to hold tightly onto things that should be pretty low on the “prized” possessions list.

Just a few weeks ago I got an email from my father-in-law asking which of the Harry Potter books we had loaned them because they wanted to donate the rest of them to a drive for orphans in Africa. My first reaction was to try to figure out a way to claim all of them. Until the last two books came out, rather than go buy my own copy, I usually bummed a copy off someone who was a bit more eager to read the books than I was. So between my in-laws and I, we had the whole set and I secretly wanted all of the books for myself. Which I don’t really understand because when faced with that imaginary scenario of being stuck on a deserted island with only four books, none of the Harry Potter books would make the list, or so I thought.

Given that the books were going to orphans in Africa, I decided that I couldn’t ask for all the books and still try to hold my head up with any sort of dignity, especially during the Christmas season, so I opted to claim two of them by saying that I wasn’t sure which of the two were mine. I sent the email off, but one line in my father-in-law’s email kept eating at me. He had casually mentioned that he had given up some of his favorite Hardy Boys books to the drive. After twenty-four hours of mulling over my first email, I decided I sounded rather petty trying to claim two of the books. Finally I decided to shoot off an email telling them to donate all of the books. I guess I’ve got a long ways to go before I can consider donating something I actually need, like a coat.