I was at a holiday party once, where a white elephant gift exchange was taking place. There I learned a great lesson about attachment and greed.
If you’ve never been to a white elephant gift exchange, the way it works is everybody brings a wrapped gift and gets a number. When it’s your turn, you get to examine all the gifts everyone with a lower number than you has already opened. If someone has a gift that you want, you’re allowed to take what they have – or you may go to the front and unwrap some other mysterious present to keep. Of course, if someone with a higher number than you fancies the gift you selected, they can take it from you once it’s their turn.
In ten minutes at this party, I went from bored to excited to happy to distraught.
3:40 pm
I am kind of bored, waiting for my turn, and nothing is striking my eye. But then, Al opens up a Ken doll (from Ken and Barbie), dressed like Professor Henry Higgins. Immediately I realize, I need this doll. I’m gonna take it from him, wrap it up, give it to my brother-in-law Bob as a gift, and it will be awesome.
3:45 pm
My turn. I walk to Al, take the Ken doll from his hands, and sit down. Victory is in my hands.
3:50 pm
Erin, who has a higher number than I did, comes over and takes the Ken doll from me! I am devastated.
When I had it, I was happy!
Now that I’d just lost it, I was upset.
On the bright side, while all of this was happening, I realized this was a microcosm of attachment. This sort of thing happens in our lives all the time. We are bored, we see something “shiny,” we want it, we desperately crave ownership of it — for a moment we are happy — then once we have it, we’re scared to lose it, and distraught when we do.
If it can be true with a Professor Henry Higgins Ken doll that I really didn’t even care about, it can be all the more so with something I actually do care about. My car. My favorite sweater. My dear friends. My relationships with others.
How attached we are to so many things! We consider them to be a part of us. Especially our precious sense of self.
The Buddha said attachment is our biggest problem and our biggest attachment is our sense of self.
Spiritual-religious advice:
Try not to be so attached.
With love,
Hiawatha Johnson, JR.
January 31, 2026
January 2026 — Portland, ORE Hiawatha Johnson, Jr., a mentor and friend died. Summer 1985 — Magic Camp Oakdale, Long Island I’m 15. He’s 30. He wears a dashiki. He uses a walking stick. I’m prepubescent. I listen to comedy cassettes on a Walkman. I’m in awe. ✧✧✧ I perform a rather banal magic act that year — me narrating
