When we give a gift to a wounded place, as people around the world do on the day of the Global Earth Exchange (this year Saturday, June 25), we offer something that is considered impractical, even useless, by many people. If you’ve ever told someone about this practice of ours, you may have been told that it would be better to plant trees, clean up a beach, or send money to save the dolphins.

But a gift is not meant to be practical. In fact, the literary deconstructionist Jacques Derrida wrote that the best gift is “the extraordinary, the unusual, the strange, the extravagant, the absurd, the mad.”

Restoration, clean-ups, and donations are vital, but they are different from gifts. A gift is an expression of an emotion, like a kiss, a laugh, or the urge to go to the aid of someone who has tripped and fallen. It is not a first step toward an outcome but an urgent command from now. It is by nature excessive.

Since RadJoy was founded in 2009, thousands of people have made all kinds of strange, mad, extraordinary gifts for places they love that are under assault. It is the making and giving of this gift that changes not only the place we’ve been called to, but us humans as well. We cannot know how the place feels about its gift. But joy almost always arises in us.

—Trebbe Johnson