Don't Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth

Suppose you give your best friend a gift certificate for $10 to Borders book store. What would your reaction be if their response was "Oh… thanks. But it's going to be hard to find something at Borders for $10. Besides, there's not really much at Borders that I would want."? You would probably be rather upset at this rudeness. In effect, your friend has just looked a gift horse in the mouth.

What does that mean? One way of telling how valuable a horse will be is to examine its teeth. If the recipient of a horse as a gift first looks at it's teeth, it is obvious that he does not appreciate it for what it was-a gift from a friend. Instead he is wondering exactly how it will benefit him. In this way, he cheapens the friendship by putting some worldly value on it.

Of course, this adage is not limited to literal gift-giving. Often, there are situations in which a higher power or blind luck can be seen as giving a "gift" to someone. Say, for example, that a man runs into the woman he has always been too afraid to talk to and she says "Hi." Let's also say that he then realizes that she is a complete air-head and he shouldn't have wasted all of his time on her. Instead of thinking how great it was luck freed him from wasting his time in the future, he may only be able to focus on the amount of time that he did waste.

This boils down to how hard it is to unconditionally appreciate many of the things that are given to us. I warn you to take this adage to heart and try to avoid letting it happen to you-appreciate what you get and you'll find you are a much happier person! (Not to mention that you'll keep the friends or acquaintances that gave you the gift, and may even receive gifts in the future.)