Want not Waste not

I do not know how much of it is promotional hollywood at work but I was touched by Tom's story about his childhood in an interview with Jim Lipton.

Tom had narrated how one christmas when Tom's family did not have any money to buy presents, his mother told the kids that instead of presents the children would pick out the name of one family member by lots, and for a whole month they would perform small acts of service and kindness for the person whose name they had drawn, but without revealing who had done it.

Wow! what a present. And what an act of kindness by tom's mother for an entire lifetime.
To teach that happiness comes from service and love and that the greatest of gifts carried no price tags at all.
Only a time tag.
The amount of time that one was willing to devote for the person one loved.

A whole lifetime can be lived without false regrets, shame at one's poverty, greed for useless objects if we could just bear this gift of the Magi to all who we meet - our respect and dignity for their true worth - and for our own.