[Cold open - the one who runs the whole thing alone] Let me tell you about a Tuesday in Maria's life. Her neighbor Rosa just lost her husband — and it's been three weeks, and Maria can't stop thinking about it. So Maria makes a casserole. She drives it over. She sits with Rosa for an hour, because Rosa's kids are far away and Maria is the person who does that. On the way home, Maria gets a text: the school needs a parent to pick up supplies for the Thursday event. Maria volunteers. Then her own mom calls — who needs someone to take her to an appointment Friday — and Maria says yes, she'll rearrange the afternoon. By Wednesday night Maria is sitting at her kitchen counter, and she is not running on empty exactly, but she can feel it starting — that quiet drain that comes when the help only flows one direction. And she has a thought she'd never say out loud: I do this all by myself. Not a complaint. Just a fact. And here's what week three is about: there's a move Maria hasn't tried yet that would change everything. It doesn't ask her to give less. It asks her to give differently — not as the supply, but as the spark. Welcome to week three.
[The thing most givers don't see] Here's what Maria can't quite see yet, and it's so obvious once someone names it that you'll wonder why nobody ever did. When Maria helps, she is the whole system. She is the one who notices the need, figures out the answer, has the skill or the time or the energy, gets in the car, and delivers. Every part of that runs through her. The need hits Maria, Maria absorbs it, Maria solves it, and then the next need hits — and she does the same thing again. The help never touches anyone except the person in need and Maria herself. It never goes anywhere else. It never sets anything in motion that keeps moving after Maria steps back. Now think about what that means for Maria over five years, ten years. She gets a little better at helping. She gets a little more tired. The people she helps keep needing help. And the circle of people who give — the ones who share that load with her — it doesn't really grow. Because the shape she's working in has no way for it to grow. Everything routes through one point: her. That shape has a name: we've been calling it the well. One source, many who drink, and the source is always Maria.
[A different move - the spark, not the supply] So here's the different move, and it sounds almost too simple. Instead of being the supply for every need, you be the connection between two people. You stop asking 'what can I give this person?' and start asking 'who do I know who has what this person needs — and who would be glad to give it?' You are not taking yourself out of the picture. You are changing your role in it. You go from being the well that everyone draws from, to being the spark that lights something between two other people. And here's the beautiful thing about a spark: when one candle lights another, neither candle loses its flame. The first one doesn't go out. It just got bigger, because now there are two flames in the room instead of one. That's the whole move. Not give less. Not give differently in some complicated way. Just ask: could this giving happen between two other people, with me as the one who sets it off? Because if the answer is yes, then you didn't just help one person. You started a flow — and flows, once they start, tend to keep going on their own.
[Maria tries it - the introduction] So let's go back to Maria's Tuesday, and let her try the move. Rosa needs company. Maria's first instinct is to go herself — to be the company. And she does go that first time, and that's fine, that's love. But she also knows Rosa is going to need company again next Tuesday, and the Tuesday after that, and Maria can't always be the one. So instead of just going, Maria thinks: who else would actually want to be here? And she remembers Diane, two streets over — who has been asking around for someone to cook with since her kids left home, who would love this, who needs exactly what Rosa might offer as much as Rosa needs what Diane would bring. So Maria makes a call. 'Rosa, I want to introduce you to my friend Diane — she bakes, she talks, she'd be wonderful. Would that be okay?' And then she calls Diane. That's it. That's the whole move. Maria did not cook. Maria did not drive. Maria did not sit for an hour. She made two calls, and she lit the spark between two people who had something the other needed. Three weeks later, Rosa and Diane are cooking together on Thursdays. Rosa has company she didn't have to ask for. Diane has a kitchen to be in. And Maria has her Tuesday afternoon back — to be the spark somewhere else.
[Why it keeps going - the old rule] Here's what makes the introduction different from a regular gift, and it's something people who study how communities work have noticed for a long time. When you give something to one person — your time, your food, your money — the giving stops there. It was generous, it was good, and it's done. But when you introduce two people who each have something the other needs, something keeps going after you step back. The two of them start trading. They help each other. Sometimes they each introduce someone else. The thing you started spreads between people you'll never meet. Scholars who looked at gift-giving traditions across many older cultures noticed a version of this: when a gift is meant to move from hand to hand, it stays alive longer than a gift meant to stop with one person. The ones that stop — they're good, but they're done. The ones that keep going? They gather a kind of life of their own as they travel. This is what Maria started with two phone calls. Not a gift that stops. A flow that keeps going — and keeps going without her having to keep pushing it.
[The pushback - 'but what if I get it wrong?'] Now I can hear the hesitation, and it's the real one: what if I introduce the wrong two people and it's a disaster? What if Diane is weird and Rosa hates it? What if I try to connect two people and they don't actually need what I thought they needed, and now it's awkward, and I've made it worse? This is a good worry. And I want to take it seriously rather than wave it away with 'it'll be fine.' Yes. Sometimes you'll misjudge a match. Sometimes two people you connect won't click. Sometimes the person you thought would be glad to help is actually too busy, and you've put them in an awkward spot. These things happen. But here's the thing you need to know about introduction failures: they are almost always small and almost always recoverable. If Diane and Rosa don't click, Rosa has lost one Tuesday afternoon — not months of your energy. If someone says 'not the right time for me,' you learn something useful and you move on. Contrast that with what happens when the Maria-as-supply system breaks down: Maria burns out, Rosa has no one, and the whole thing collapses because it was held together by one person. The risk in starting a flow is small. The risk in being the whole well, forever, is not small at all. So yes — you'll misjudge sometimes. Do it anyway. Because the small awkward failures are nowhere near as costly as the big quiet burnouts.
[The aha - you're not the point] Here's the turn that takes a second to land, and I want you to sit with it. When Maria is the well — the supply for every need — she is, in a sense, the whole point. Every flow runs through her. She is the center. And there's something that feels right about that, even something that feels like love. But it also means that when she leaves the room, the giving stops. The flow can't exist without her there, holding it together. Now flip it. When Maria is the spark — when she's lighting connections between other people — she is still important, she still matters enormously, but she is not the point. The flow between Rosa and Diane is the point. And that flow doesn't need Maria in the room anymore to keep going. This is actually the harder thing to learn, not because it's complicated but because it asks something of the ego: to give in a way where the giving happens without you. To be the match that lit the candle, not the candle that keeps burning. The most generous people I know have learned to love that move — to start something, step back, and watch it run. Because that's when you know it's real: when it goes on without you.
[How the flow comes back] Now, I want to follow what happens to Maria — because this is the part that surprises people. Two months after Maria introduced Rosa and Diane, something shows up at Maria's door. It's Diane. She's holding a batch of empanadas she made, because she heard from Rosa that Maria's mom was coming to town and things were going to be a little hectic. Maria didn't ask. Maria didn't expect anything. But the flow she started found its way back. That's how this works, and it's not magic, and it's also not something you can force or schedule. You don't start a flow in order to get something back. You start it because two people need to know each other, and you happen to be the one who can see that. But what tends to happen — what Maria's story shows and what you'll find in your own life if you start watching — is that things come back around. Not always from the same person, not always in the same form, not always when you expected it. But the giving goes around the whole room and it comes home. That's not a reward system. That's just what it looks like when the flow is real.
[Turn it on yourself] Alright — let's bring this close, because it stops being interesting the moment it stays a story about Maria. So let me ask you three real questions. And actually pause on each one — not a quiz, just a moment to let it land. First: where in your life are you the well right now? Where are you carrying something that could actually live between two other people — if you just made the introduction? It might be a friendship where one person needs what the other has. A need at work, or in your neighborhood, or in your family, where you've been showing up as the whole answer when you could instead be the connection. Second: who do you know who has something that someone else you know actually needs? Don't overthink it. You probably already have a face in mind. That face is a spark waiting to be lit. And third — and this one is for the people who have been the well for a long time: who has been quietly carrying the whole room while everybody else just draws from them? Who in your life is running the Maria pattern, and could use one person to say 'let me take that next one — I know just who to connect you with'? Sit with those three for a second. One of them probably landed. That's where this week's give starts.
[This week - start one flow] So here's your give for week three, and it is one thing, small on purpose. Find two people in your life who should know each other — one who has something, one who needs it. And introduce them. That's it. You can write it as a text: 'Hey, I want to connect you two — I think you'd actually be good for each other.' You can call them both. You can bring them together over coffee. The form doesn't matter. What matters is that you be the spark between them — not the supply, not the one who carries the thing from one side to the other — just the one who says: you two, meet. Now I want to say one thing before you go do this, because it matters. You are not doing this to get something back. You are not doing this to test whether the people in your life are worthy of your generosity. You are doing this because you can see a connection that they can't see yet, and you have the five seconds it takes to name it. The give is the introduction. That's the whole thing. Start one flow this week. Make one introduction. Then step back and let it run.
[Outro] There is a quiet relief in this one — and I hope you felt it. You do not have to be the well. You do not have to carry every need from the person who has it to the person who could meet it. You just have to be the spark: the one who says, here, these two should know each other. Make that happen once this week and you will have started something that can run longer than you, and farther, and between people you haven't even met yet. That's the whole economy of this — why the flow goes around and keeps going, and why the most generous people you know are almost never the most drained. It's in the third book whenever you're ready for it. Next week we'll look at the other side of this — at what it means to make a real ask, and why asking, done right, is its own kind of spark. Watched over, as always, by Daisy. I'll see you in week four.