‘She has more yoghurt than me!’
‘He has more shreddies than me!’
‘Yes, but do you each have enough breakfast?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes’
And so our breakfast conversations went this week. Comparing and competing can be powerful forces in our lives and in our culture. Competition can be helpful, can drive us on to do things we never imagined we could. But competition can be unhealthy as well especially when we define ourselves by other, by what we are not.
Comparing and competing can lead to places where we ‘win’ but we don’t know why we were competing in the first place as we don’t even want the winnings. Or the winnings just end up in the bin (or compost bin as the breakfast leftovers do).
Enough is a difficult concept for 5 and 7 year olds, but also for adults. For me. However for many of us, we have enough stuff and food. More than enough. And yet there is always someone who will have more. And especially someone who will have something different than us. Sometimes thinking about ‘enough’ helps us shift our competition towards how many others can I help get ‘enough’. And sometimes it enables us to compete against ourselves, about who we were yesterday.
But most of all moving to realising we have enough opens us up to gratefulness. And most of our communities and organisations would benefit enormously if more of us made this shift.
The choice is up to us.
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