How are you with sharing?

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I mean sharing in terms of 'things'. E.g. offering sweets from a bag, sharing stationary or letting someone borrow your notepad, lending books or DVDs etc.

I don't mean in terms of sharing food, information or feelings.

I tend to be an over-sharer as long as I'm not close to the object or have a real objection to lend that person anyway. I was always lending out pens at high school and often I didn't see them again. Pencils went a similar way, but rubbers got returned more often.

I wouldn't usually let people use my paper, notebooks, etc.

The only strong opinion I have is going to sound completely screwed to most people. I'm not in the habit of apologizing for it though...

I've lived my life in large cities. Every so often I encounter people who are down on their luck for various reasons: have a shabby home but hungry because foodstamps haven't arrived; outright homeless by choice; involuntarily homeless.

As awful as it sounds: I don't provide money to them. When asked, I have always bought food.

But my position on donating money is that it's equal to a weapon [1]: it can be used for anything at all, and once I turn it over I don't have any significant control over how it's used.

I've offered food on innumerable occasions. It's funny: in New York City I'm usually taken up on that. In San Francisco, Mountain View, San Jose, Dublin (in Ireland, not California), I'm usually refused when I offer food instead of money or smokes.

[1] Incidentally, yes, in my worldview, money, guns and capital are the same thing: instruments that can be used to apply force in an innumerable number of ways. That's why I'm careful and stingy.

As a child I was pretty bad about sharing. I never let anyone have anything, never traded things with others, etc. However, as an adult, I have become a much more giving person. I find that doing so has many more benefits than not doing it. Most people are more ready to share with you and give things to you if you yourself are a more selfless person. I can't do everything on my own and so I do tend to try and help others, especially if they have skills I lack.

I don't feel any real attachment to things. If somebody else needs it and I have it, then they get it. It just makes sense to me that way.

I'm really very good at this, I have no problem with sharing and I help others do things willingly, if I had a lot of something, I'd willingly share those things if I had people with whom I could share them. I also liked to help people with their homeworks when I was still at school. When for example I happened to have a bigger amount of freebies than I could use up on my own, I gave them to my cousin and her friend who visited us, I also often give stuff I don't need to my young cousin (the daughter of the former one) - typically these are pieces of junk I keep in my drawers (old body care cream jars, stickers etc.) but she likes them. Mom often criticized me helping people with school works and giving them things she had to pay for (like books), though.

I'm good with it. It has to be with someone I know. I know mind sharing sweets with others because less calories.

My brother still has two of my N64 games and I don't really care about them because I never played them so it was very unlikely I would miss them. My nephew is borrowing one of my PS2 games and he still has it. I never played it so I don't care if he has it. I have written down things people borrow from me to keep track.

I let a stranger use my cell phone the other night to call her mother and I had to hover over her to make sure she wouldn't steal it. We were both at the same stop, got on the same light rail so it was no big deal.

Occasionally I will still have issues with it such as when it comes to money.

I'm completely fine with sharing this kind of thing, except that sometimes I don't realize that someone else might want say a sweet or gum and don't think to offer it but if asks I'm generous with these kinds of things......I don't care to much about them (that might be why).

I'm talking here about the things the OP mentions in their post (sweets, a pencil). I don't like leanding the books in my collection to anyone except my mom though and I can't share meals or a box of cookies or something with people beacuse I'll just eat really fast and without relaizing it eat more than my share.

With me it totally depends...if I'm over-enthusiastic about connecting with another person or have something in abundance, I'll share it with others. However, my sense of personal property and privacy is akin to the above cat macros. I can only share something if I'm not attached to it and/or don't mind not seeing it ever again.

I'm very over protective of everything. I avoid sharing as I get terribly anxious giving possessions to people, usually about if it gets broken or I get the item back.

I give gifts to people a lot, but I rarely lend them my own things. I hate having to remember who borrowed what and then ask for them back. I take good care of my belongings and don't want careless people to use them. The only exception are children's books and toys. My kids have pretty much outgrown them so people can borrow them and I don't keep track of them. Luckily my fashion sense is different from mainstream people's so family and friends never want to borrow my clothes.

In my maturer state I've become a lot better and wanting more to share with others.

I don't like in turn lending my stuff - I'm always forgetting who took my things and I am not sure if I get my things back in the same condition they were before. And my mother wasn't ever letting me lend my things, complaining about this. Once, as a child, I lent that boy from our staircase a guide on our town which he needed for school and he gave it back after maybe 2-3 years, mom was quite angry, the more that the book's cover fell off.

I can share, but I prefer not to. I find it awkward to have to ask for something back that someone borrowed and forgot to give back. I let a classmate borrow a book in the early 1980s---I still haven't gotten it back. Several months after he borrowed it, he said he couldn't remember the book. A teacher borrowed a record of mine once---I had to ask for it back months later. A person at my church borrowed a camera several years ago---never returned. I'm to the point where I have become selfish. Why should I buy something for someone else to steal?

I'm OK with sharing, I like to share. The only thing I don't like sharing is when I'm looking for clothes in a clothes shop and another woman comes and looks at the clothes on the same rail. I like the whole rail to myself because another person standing next to me moving the clothes up and down is annoying and distracts me too. But I think that comes more from anxiety of strangers invading my space more than not wanting to share.