Overabundance

On an episode of "Scientific Frontiers", Alan Alda is meeting with a biologist who is studying social behaviors in chimpanzees. In one experiment, they throw two large bundles of leaves into a pen with a dozen chimpanzees. The biologist notes that most of the group shares one bundle while one of the juvenile chimps takes the second bundle and tries to protect it, keeping it all for himself. There's more food in a bundle than the juvenile chimp can possibly eat by himself, but he's too immature to realize that he's got an overabundance and that there's more than enough for him to share with others.

The biologist notes the downstream effects of the social interactions. Later in the afternoon as the chimps groom each other, the ones who shared food receive more grooming from their peers. The chimps also remember who shared with others. If one chimp has shared food with a second chimp, a third chimp who observed this will be more willing to share food with the first chimp. The chimps exhibit observation and memory of interactions even when they don't directly benefit.

I remember reading once that if you feel like you don't have enough of something (love, money, etc.) then you should start giving away whatever you do have. It seems like in the act of giving you're released from your attachment to that "need"? Maybe in sharing you also open up the pathways in the universe for those things to flow back to you?