A Gifted Experience

Gift giving.  I take a lot of pride in my gifts, searching around for those perfect somethings to share with the people I love.  But as the years go by this gets harder and harder.  At a certain point it begins to feel like everybody has what they need, and so the gifts devolve into trinkets, knickknacks that end up beside the bathroom mirror or on the bedside table.  And at a certain point, our homes become cluttered with these little things which, at best, serve as reflectors, memory-provokers, reminding us of the people who gave them to us and the memories we share with them. Which gets me thinking more about the true value of these things: memory. When I scroll through the list of Best Gifts I've Received, I think of a road trip through the Southwest with my mom, watching dust devils swirl up from the cracked earth, sleeping on the bedrock cliffs of Big Sur,

sharing a bottle of wine at a cafe in Vail.  I think of a plane ticket from a good friend, whisking me off to Chicago for a weekend of shared music and conversation.  I think of another road trip with an old friend, up through Western national parks and alongside rivers cut deep into the rocks.  What these all have in common, what all great gifts have in common, is the gift of experience.  From great gifts we reap the reward of memory, which returns to us over and over again with interest.  Think of the best gift you ever received, your favorite gift.  Is it the thing itself which brings you so much pleasure? Or the memory behind it? So I’m wondering, can we bypass the clutter and go straight for the heart of the matter?  Instead of a thing, a reflector, can we give the memory directly? Yes.  It’s called an experience gift.  Experiential gifts, adventure gifts, memory-makers, the stuff of stories told over dinner tables for years to come. Dreams realized. For some of us these experiences revolve around luxury, always having wanted to spend a day at the spa with a friend, getting our toes rubbed, shoulders massaged, pores cleansed, sipping champagne from crystal flutes in fuzzy white bathrobes.  For others, it's a hands-on Kansas City BBQ lesson, revealed by the Kansas City Baron of Barbeque himself.  Still for others it revolves around the thrill of adventure, a testing of wills as we saddle up on for a Houston bull riding session that will be the wildest 8 seconds of our lives (if we can hang on that long).  Each of us harbors a desire to do something out of the ordinary, and most of us just need a little nudge in the right direction.  We need someone to say, Here’s the opportunity of a lifetime.  Do it.  Or, here’s everything you need to realize that dream—go forth, dreamer. Now imagine you have the power to give this gift.  Cloud 9 Living is the place where dreams are served up in neat packages for the taking.  Send her off on that wine country cycling tour, bring the world of sushi to his dining-room table with our sushi lessons for two, give your newlywed friends a second honeymoon on a private lakefront dinner cruise in Austin.  Let them find their own knickknacks to hang beside the mirror; you’ll give them the experience it reminds them of.