Lending Forward

Often our attitudes, our ideas, our judgment start from who we are, what we do and what we consider a normal behavior. Often this is the reason why we get into misunderstandings or get cheated and even abused in one way or the other. It's not like it is a bad thing, as it is often the base upon which we trust people we don't know every well, we just came to meet, and through it is how we make friends, how we dare to help people in need and often how charity and goodness works. However, from time to time it's good to remember that not everybody holds themselves to the same principles, the same ideas, the same attitudes and the same values.

In this particcular sense, there's something that in my normal environment would be absolutely unthinkable, but what seems perfectly normal for others: lending forward. Lending forward is the process where Amy lends her favorite scarf to Ginny, because Ginny is her best friend and she trusts her completely. Ginny's sister, Kattie, sees the scarf, likes it and asks Ginny to lend it to her. Ginny does and so Kattie takes the scarf with herself to her job, where her coworker Beth asks her to lend it to her because it's so pretty. the scarf is now on Beth's bag, from here her five year old daughter, Danny, sees it and asks her mom to pwease, pwease give it to her, which Beth does. Danny takes it to Daycare where the kind that picks on her, Jimmy, sees it and takes it away from her. They fight, the scarf gets around the class and ends up ripped and stashed in the trash can.

That's lending forward. Now, you might think that the previous is a story a bit too bleak about something you may or may not do, but it is not, as stories could be far, far worse. You may lend your favorite book and find out that it got lost because it went on and on and someone lent it to someone they barely knew and now the person and the book are gone. You could be lending a very dear shirt or pair of earrings, maybe a watch to a friend and find in a couple of weeks that it's being worn by someone you don't like at all.

I don't believe in lending forward, not only because that's the fastest way to lose your things, but because this is a way to disrespect a person. It's a way to indirectly say that you don't care about the other person and that you can't be trusted. When you lend something to someone, you are not only expecting to get it back, but you are expecting to get it back in the same conditions you gave it in the first place. Otherwise, why would you lend it? I mean, if I want to get my Colts' jersey ruined, I can do that all by myself. If I want to get rid of it and never see it again, I'd give it away, and not lend it. Wouldn't that be obvious?

My dad says that a book should never be lent, that the person who lends a book is stupid, but the one who gives it back is even more stupid. I don't agree with him, but when I lend my books, I do so only to my best friends, people I trust (and people I know where they live, so I can break down their doors if things come to that :-P), but when I lend them a book, I expect them not to lend it forward. It has happened that a friend has read a book, liked it to madness and asked me if they could lend it to another friend whom I also know. I've said yes. That's different from them reading the book and then lending it to the next person who wants to read it without first consulting with me (the owner of the book) is that's okay. In the previous case, that's like when Kattie asks Ginny for the scarf, Ginny told her that the scarf is Amy's and she'll ask her if she can lend it. Maybe Kattie then would have refused Beth the scarf explaining her that the scarf isn't hers at all, so she can't lend it, but she can ask where the owner got it.

People who have gotten upset because the refusal towards allowing "lending forward" often argue that such an attitude is a "materialistic attitude" where you give too much value to "things" rather than experiences. This is quite funny comming from people who want to lend a thing from you. Don't they want to benefit from having in their hands that book, that shirt, that bangle? If we - the refusers - are the ones with the materialistic attitude, what they "the enlightened ones" need that particular matter? After all, if they don't care for the destiny of that thing, how could we trust it to them? Then, what's our experience as the Amy of the story, when Beth gives the scarf to her daughter? None, safe the loss of the scarf. Besides, calling it a materialistic attitude is not only a crude minimizing of the matter, but a diverting from the core of the matter: you are asking for trust, when you know well that you don't deserve it. You are asking people to place their trust in you, but you won't move a finger to earn it, to deserve it, and even after betraying that trust, you expect to still hold people to it, by placing the blame on them with excuses and arguments that aim to take the blame from where it should be put: you.

Trust can be betrayed in many ways: you cheat in a relationship when you haven't clearly expressed from the begining that you hope to have an open relationship with no boundaries; you abuse of the help given to you, and turn those giving you a hand into your personal servats, and expect them to do everything for you; you promise but you don't deliever; you mislead people, you lie, and yes, you lend forward their things without their knowledge or their consent. And betraying trust is a very painful form of disrespect.