Balance

There's something in life that has always puzzled me and that is the balance we strike between give and take.  I know that some people are inherently generous and others are inherently greedy.  There are those that will give freely without any thought of what they get in return.  The generosity of these people knows no bounds.  On the other hand the people who are greedy, take all that they can and want even to take more.  They have no thought for the person who gives and in the end consume all that they can when they can equally with a depth that knows no bounds.

This binary view isn't one that fits with the world well, to be more accurate there needs to be 2 more personalities added to the mix.  That is if you can consider greed and generosity as personality traits.  These two more personalities that we add are the frivolous giver and the glutton.  These two differ from their extreme counterparts in that their respective traits do have bounds.  For the frivolous giver he will give without any thought for the future but he has a limit he will eventually reach, a point where he stops and recounts his finances as it were, and upon realisation of his overspend enters into an emotional recession, retracting his generosity, almost to the point of becoming a miser.  The glutton equally has a tipping point - the point they reach when they have consumed more than they ought, to use the eating analogy his stomach swells to the point of bursting, at which point he snaps back and pukes up everything he ate losing everything that he lapped up so greedily.  In that aftermath the glutton will pass through a period of fasting, where consuming anything at all turns his stomach.

In many respects gluttony and frivolity come together as yin and yang, swapping places occasionally, you see the good in the bad, and the bad in the good, but only for a time, before both return to their overwhelming nature.

I would consider myself generous, but I would also consider my generosity to reach a limit - quite a high limit I will admit but it does exist.  In this respect I can only conclude that I am the frivolous giver.  The problems that arise then are the moments when you realise that your emotions are spent.  In that moment the prevailing personality is inverted.  The question is, when this happens and you find yourself derailed, how do you get back on track?