The Ocean I Swim In

When giving becomes rhythm, not currency

Apr 15, 2025

👋 Hey, it’s Bryan. Welcome to BEing Human, where we discuss what it takes to lead, perform at your best, and connect Human-to-Human.

The ocean has always been where I go to reset. Something about its steady rhythm and honest movement speaks to a deeper truth I’ve been trying to live.

There’s a moment when a wave reaches the shore and pulls back, not in retreat, but in rhythm. That’s how I experience reciprocity, not as a ledger, but as the natural tide of human connection. We give. We receive. We return again.

This isn’t just poetic, it’s practical. Sobriety taught me that. So did fatherhood. So did the moments I’ve found myself sitting across from someone, not trying to fix or impress, but just offering presence.

That offering, I’ve learned, is more than enough.

But for most of my life, that felt impossible. I was raised to believe that worth had to be proven through achievement, performance, and production. I built a career around doing, being visible, and making things happen. And it worked, in a way.

But underneath, I was exhausted. Lonely, even in rooms full of people. Offering presence without fixing, without giving more than I had, felt foreign.

Sobriety cracked that open for me. It asked me to stop reaching outward and start sitting with myself and others without needing to do anything. What opened up was space. Stillness. Deeper relationships that weren’t built on my usefulness, but on truth. Yet, I still wrestle with it.

The old muscle memory kicks in - I want to help, solve, overextend. But more often now, I remember: I can show up. I can breathe. I can just be here. And that is enough.

Reciprocity Isn’t Transactional—It’s Tidal

The modern world trains us to keep score. We exchange emails, favors, and feedback, expecting some version of return. But the real connection doesn’t tally. It trusts. It breathes.

Melina Bondy wrote:

“Reciprocity is a dance like life itself. The air we breathe, the food we eat, the wounds we carry, and the love we share are all given and received.”

That line rings in me like a quiet bell. The relationships that have shaped me - mentors, friends, even strangers…they weren’t transactional. They were generous. Sometimes in words. Sometimes in silence. Always in presence.

And presence, I’ve found, is the currency of real reciprocity.

Dana, Flourishing, and the Gift of Being With

In Buddhist tradition, there’s a practice called dāna—a kind of generosity that gives freely, without strings. It recognizes that when we offer something, whether it’s a meal, our time, or our attention, we’re not giving away—we’re joining in.

Robin Wall Kimmerer writes:

“All flourishing is mutual.”

That’s not just poetic, either. It’s ecological. Biological. Nothing thrives in isolation. The mycelium needs the tree. The tree needs the sun. We need each other.

Reciprocity is wired into everything that works in the natural world. And yet, somewhere along the way, we started believing we had to earn every ounce of love, or praise, or support. That’s not leadership. That’s survival mode.

To be in service of others is to dissolve the illusion of separateness. It’s not about fixing or rescuing - it’s about offering our presence as a shoreline, steady and available. When we show up for someone, not to change them but to be with them, we create a space where healing can unfold.

Service opens us. It softens the rigid boundaries of self and reminds us that what we give away freely often returns to us in forms we never expected - peace, connection, a deeper sense of belonging. It’s not martyrdom. It’s mutual nourishment.

The Kind of Giving That Trusts the Long Tide

True reciprocity isn’t always instant. Sometimes we give with open hands, and nothing comes back, at least not how we imagined. The thank-you doesn’t arrive. The gesture isn’t returned. The silence stretches longer than we’d like.

But still, we give.

Not to earn. Not to be seen. But because something in us recognizes the offering itself as sacred. A quiet honoring of what connects us.

This kind of giving is its own form of trust. It says: I may not see the return, but I believe in the rhythm. I believe in the tide.

And often, the return shows up somewhere else - down the road, through someone else, in a moment we couldn’t have predicted because reciprocity doesn’t follow our timelines. It moves like water - subtle, slow, often invisible until something flows back toward us one day and we realize: Oh. There it is.

Simon Sinek writes:

“Relationships are not about give and take, they’re about give and give.”

We give, not to be owed, but to stay aligned. To keep the current moving. To be the kind of leader, friend, and human who remembers, generosity is not a transaction. It’s a way of being.

I once wrote a letter to someone I deeply admired. I poured my heart into it, thanked them, told them what their words meant, and shared something I’d never said aloud. I never heard back.

For years, I carried that silence like a little bruise. And then, almost a decade later, I met someone new who told me how my words had carried them through something dark, nearly the exact words I had once sent. Different person. Different time.

But the current had moved. The tide had returned.

You can feel it when someone keeps taking but never meets the tide. When the rhythm is all reach and there is no return, it’s time to step back and let the current carry you elsewhere.

We Are Not Separate

Many traditions say some version of this truth: we are not separate. And that’s not just philosophical, it’s human.

We move into a different current when we give without separating ourselves from the other and receive without guilt or scoreboard thinking.

Giving and receiving aren’t opposites. They’re one motion.

In that space, we transform. So does friendship. So does how we treat the stranger at the café or the teammate on a hard day.

Yes, it’s vulnerable. But it’s also powerful. Reciprocity asks us to stop grasping and start trusting the tide.

A Reckoning

Where are you still keeping score?

Where are you waiting to be repaid before you show up again?

The wave doesn’t ask the shore, “What have you done for me lately?”

It just comes. Fierce. Unedited. Whole. That’s the kind of presence we’re here to be. Not measured. Not owed. Just true.

Because the tide always returns, maybe not how you expect, maybe not from where you gave. But it comes.

And when it does, it brings you back to yourself.

Stay human.
—Bryan

Comments are open to all subscribers. You can also upgrade your subscription.

BEing Human