Why Do I Overspend on Gifts to Look Generous?

Look at this honestly, without shame. A gift can carry two different purposes at once — love for the person, and fear of how you will be seen. Most people never separate these two things, so the fear rides along, hidden inside the ribbon. The cost is not only money. It is the quiet strain afterward, the checking of accounts, the small resentment that creeps in when generosity was never fully chosen. Reason does not forbid gifts. It asks that you know which part of you is paying. So ask, for each gift: who is this serving? The recipient, who needs to feel loved? Or the audience — even an audience of one — who must see you as generous? A gift that serves only the audience has stopped being a gift and become a performance you cannot afford.