Rather than buying new stuff for your family and friends, I like experience gifts. In this post, I thought I’d explain that a little more.
An experience gift is a gift based on an experience rather than a thing.
Most gifts, when you think about it, revolve around providing an experience more than just a thing. You don’t buy a stuffed snowman for your Aunt Marie because she needs one or even wants one. You buy it and gift it to create an experience. You want your aunt to open this thing, feel loved, and remember that love when she sees this snowman sitting around each year. Something like that.
The goal of buying experience gifts is simply to acknowledge that experiences are really what we want and then try to extend them as far as they go, making them as exciting or heartwarming as we can.
Experience gifts are harder to give than physical gifts. They take more planning and often cost more money. Depending on the measurements, it’s often tougher to buy someone a ticket to skydive than just plunk down the cash to buy them a new TV.
Also, experience gifts can be deceptive because they seem so fleeting. The skydive only seems to last a day, the actual dive mere minutes. The TV, on the other hand, promises to keep on giving and giving and giving as long as it lights the living room.
The inconvenience of these kinds of products countered with the tug of tangible products makes it tough to gift experiences. But perhaps that’s also part of why I like them. They come packed with meaning instead of just foam peanuts.
