We can give out only what we have. That is not a moral statement about how people ought to behave, it is closer to a mechanical one about how things actually work. How can anybody give happiness when there is only sadness inside them? How can they give peace when there is nothing in there but restlessness and chaos?
The actions can be given, and a great many people are very good at the actions. Being present, listening properly, doing the practical thing, saying what needs saying at the right moment. And underneath all of those actions something else is being transmitted, and people receive it whether or not either party has words for what it is.
That is what almost nobody understands for most of a life. Giving is taken to be a matter of conduct, of doing the right things reliably and often. It is not. Conduct is the visible part, and the visible part is not the part that arrives.
What people actually receive
Think about being helped by two different people who did exactly the same thing, on the same day, with the same competence. One left you feeling steadier afterwards. The other left you feeling faintly worse, and you could not say why, because there was nothing wrong with the help itself and you would have defended them if asked.
The difference is not skill and it is not sincerity. It is what was in the person doing it. Help that comes out of resentment carries the resentment across, however carefully it is packaged and however much the giver would deny it. Help that comes out of obligation arrives as a debt, even when nobody mentions one and no repayment is expected. Help that comes out of a need to be needed arrives with a hook in it.
And the person receiving it knows. Not consciously, usually, and they will not be able to explain it if asked directly. But they know, and it affects what the help actually does for them. This is why some very generous people leave almost everybody around them slightly diminished, and cannot understand why they are not more loved for it.
Why the generous are so often empty
The people who give the most are frequently the ones with the least inside them, and that is not a coincidence or an unfortunate accident. Giving is a very effective way of not attending to oneself. It is inarguable, nobody criticises it, and it ensures that there is never an hour left over in which anything about one's own condition would have to be looked at.
There is also the matter of receiving. Somebody who gives constantly is usually completely unable to take anything at all. Taking makes them feel indebted, and being indebted is intolerable for reasons they have never examined, and so they stay in permanent surplus. That looks like generosity from every angle and it is much closer to a defence.
Refusing what people offer is not humility of any kind. It denies them the very thing the giver claims to value most. If giving is good, then somebody who will only ever give and never receive has quietly kept the good part entirely for themselves, and everybody around them is being served rather than met.
Filling first
The obvious conclusion is that a person should attend to themselves before giving to others. It is true, and it is also very hard to act on, because it sounds exactly like an excuse and everybody has heard it before from people who were making one.
More precisely, then. What is inside anybody is going out anyway, in everything they do, whether or not they approve of it and whether or not they have noticed. The choice is not whether to transmit. The choice is only whether to know what is being transmitted, and knowing turns out to change it.
And there is nothing selfish about attending to one's own condition, which is the fear that stops most people. It is the only thing that changes what actually reaches anybody else. Every hour spent understanding what is genuinely inside does more for the people nearby than the same hour spent serving them out of a place where there was nothing.
