If there were ever a cautionary tale about overgiving, it would be The Devoted Friend by Oscar Wilde.
The story within a story follows the interactions between a poor fellow named Hans, who lives modestly in a tiny cottage all by himself and works in his garden, and a rich miller named Hugh. The miller would pontificate about being the most devoted friend to Hans, and his way of showing it would be to always pluck a flower from his friend’s garden when he visited in the finer months. Sometimes, the neighbours wondered why the rich miller never gave anything in return for the flowers, but Hans never seemed all that troubled—he simply enjoyed listening to what the miller had to say about the unselfishness of true friendship.
When the winter descends, Hans suffers greatly from cold, hunger and loneliness as the miller, his most devoted friend, never comes to see him. In the words of the miller, "There is no good in my going to see little Hans as long as the snow lasts, for when people are in trouble they should be left alone, and not be bothered by visitors.”
In the spring, the flowers start to bloom once more, so the miller decides to visit Hans and his beautiful garden.
Hans, I want to shout, can’t you see that the miller is the very definition of a fair-weather friend?
But then I recall how often I’ve taken someone on their words, not their actions, and how long it can take to realise the lack of the latter.
Hans tells the miller he is delighted to have so many primroses this season, as he will be able to sell them at the market and buy back the wheelbarrow he had to sell during winter to buy bread.
The miller tells Hans not to bother selling the primroses as he will give him his old wheelbarrow, which is in very bad condition with one side completely missing. Praising the miller’s generosity, Hans says he can repair the wheelbarrow because he has a plank of wood in his house.
Here, if it wasn’t already obvious, we start to see how the miller takes advantage of Hans. The miller says that the plank is exactly what he needs to fix the hole in the roof of his barn, so Hans fetches the plank for the miller as thanks for the promised broken wheelbarrow.
Unfortunately, it’s not a very big plank, so, there will be none left to repair the wheelbarrow—but of course, that’s not the miller's fault.
Hans, I want to shout, forget about this no-good wonky wheelbarrow and follow your original plan to sell the primroses. You don’t need someone else to help you; you have everything you need!
But then I recall how often I’ve given parts of myself away for an empty promise.
Things don’t improve for Hans. After taking the plank of wood, the miller goes on to ask Hans to fill a large basket with flowers in return for the promised wheelbarrow. This makes Hans anxious, as it’s a rather big basket so there won’t be many flowers left for him to sell at the market, and he wanted to try and get his silver buttons back for his coat. The miller senses this hesitation and says it would be unfriendly to refuse since he has promised to give him his wheelbarrow.
Hans, I want to shout, don’t you see the true cost of things here? You are no longer being generous, you are paying too much—you are giving away the plank of wood and the primroses, only to be left with a broken wheelbarrow you cannot fix.
But then I recall how often I’ve made the same psychological somersault.
Something will cause me anxiety—a request, a circumstance, a conflict—and instead of addressing that anxiety directly, I turn things upside down and inside out and begin to fawn. Fight, flight, freeze and fawn are the broader collection of stress responses, and to fawn often involves over-giving, over-agreement, and a primary concern with pleasing others as a way to cover up distress.
For me, a fawn response often involves a knee-jerk reaction to pay too much. This could be literal—a trivial example is buying the entire box of dreadful-tasting snacks I don’t want because I said yes to a sample. But mostly, paying too much is figurative—I give too much of my time, my energy, and my own sense of worth in circumstances I don’t want to, but don’t know how not to. Paying too much has been a way to compensate for not feeling worthy enough
For me, this somersault went undetected for a long time because paying too much for things looks like generosity, and generosity is heralded as a positive characteristic. As Joan Didion wrote in the 1961 Vogue essay, On Self-Respect, “We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gift for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give.”
Yet a willingness to give that stems from a fawn response isn’t a positive characteristic; it’s self-abandonment—and if we return to the story of The Devoted Friend, it can be fatal.
The miller himself plays on this notion that generosity is an attractive trait, proclaiming “generosity is the essence of friendship.” Yet the miller’s view of generosity is a corrupted one, and as the story shows, it is Hans’s generosity that has been exploited. While the broken wheelbarrow has yet to make it into his possession, the very promise of it sees Hans do everything the miller asks of him so as not to jeopardise the friendship.
Despite desperately needing to tend to his garden to make a living, Hans is busy all day helping the miller with an endless slew of favours—carrying flour, repairing the roof, and driving sheep.
Such a desire to please the miller costs Hans his livelihood and, ultimately, his life. One night, during a terrible storm, he agrees to fetch the doctor to help the miller’s son who has fallen from a ladder and hurt himself. But the miller can’t even spare Hans his lantern for the journey, and on his return, Hans loses his way, wanders off on the moor, and drowns.
Poor Hans pays the ultimate price for his generosity towards the miller—giving his life to please him and secure a broken wheelbarrow promised in a broken friendship.
It's a grim ending, and as frustrated as the reader is at Hugh the exploitative miller, there is some truth in his final sentiments despite its misapplication to himself: “One always suffers for being generous.”
That is, one always suffers when they do not know the true cost of their own worth.
There is nothing inherently wrong with things like generosity or loyalty. I personally believe in modelling the behaviour we wish to receive, and thoughtfulness, kindness, curiosity, and generosity are important values of mine.
But what I’ve learned in my own experiences of paying too much is that there is a big difference between congruence to our own values and contorting ourselves.
It’s when we bend ourselves to the point we lose sight of our own worth—our own ability to replace our wheelbarrow—that we create a distance from ourselves that is corrosive to the soul.
So often in thinking we need to please other people, we give away the very thing we need. We look to others to affirm our sense of worth, paying too much in our time or energy to secure something we don’t need or may already possess.
Eventually, it catches up with us. It’s fatal, not in the sense that it costs us our lives as it did Hans, but in a more metaphorical sense—we either lose our sense of self, or we lose our ability to tolerate the circumstances any longer.
Joan Didion describes this phenomenon as the alienation from self and describes what can happen in its advanced stages: “We no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the spectre of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that one's sanity becomes an object of speculation among one's acquaintances.”
It can be difficult to untangle from a situation where we have alienated or abandoned ourselves. It can be impossible to decipher who or what is to blame. Like Hans, we find it hard to recognise false promises, guilt trips, societal constraints and hollow expectations.
Dynamics such as co-dependency can form, which is a pattern of forsaking your own well-being, needs, and self-care to support (and even enable) someone else. The need to be needed by another becomes a negative feedback loop.
Yet there is a way to find ourselves, to make our way back to our own thriving gardens. I know because I had to learn to do just that. As I delve more into below, I had to find an antidote for paying too much.