The Anonymous Gift
Short story about how loudly the self objects to being unseen.
The plan was modest: one good thing nobody would ever know he had done.
Choosing took a week, which should have told him something. Everything he thought of had a witness attached.
In the end he left an envelope of money in a letterbox two streets over at half past eleven at night, and walked home feeling magnificent.
The trouble started at breakfast. He wanted, with an intensity that frightened him, to tell his wife. Not to boast — he explained that to himself carefully.
By Thursday it had found a new route. Had the money arrived? Had anyone suspected him — and if not, why not?
On Saturday he met the mother in the shop, and heard in his own voice a small awful eagerness for her to mention an envelope.
She didn't.
He walked home understanding that he had spent nine days trying to pay himself back.
He did it again in October. It was easier. Not easy.
Do one good thing nobody will know about, and listen to how loudly you object.
Ohananda.com
Sufi teaching on the nafs; al-Ghazali on sincerity (ikhlas)
Inspired by the Sufi treatment of the nafs (the self-asserting soul) and the emphasis on ikhlas — sincerity of intention — in writers such as al-Ghazali. The story is Ohananda's own.
Sufi psychology is precise about the nafs. It is not evil; it is hungry, and its favourite food is being seen as good.
This is why anonymity is used as a practice across traditions — the Sufi orders, the Jewish idea of matan b'seter, the instruction not to let the left hand know what the right is doing. The practice does not aim at silencing the voice, only at recognising it.
What good thing could you do this week that nobody will ever know about?
