To build and maintain our community together and make our people’s problems our problems and solve them together.
This is my favorite day!
“we are each other’s
harvest:
we are each other’s
business:
we are each other’s
magnitude and bond.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks
Or as some of us say: we all we got.
I can easily see the downside of this. We often feel out of balance with our community: we make our people’s problems our own but they don’t make our problems theirs.
There is no avoiding that someone will have to take the first leap. And that is scary. I like to rest in the knowledge that the leap can be more of a step. If I am taking my child to the park, do I drop by and pick up my friend’s children on the way? Or tell my friend to meet me at the park and drop her kids off so she can go to the bank alone? Do I buy one extra package of spaghetti noodles and meat sauce to prepare at the same time I prepare for my family and take it to my neighbor because I heard him coughing this morning? When my nephew shovels my driveway and sidewalk, can I tip him to shovel my neighbor’s too? Do I incentivize my teenage daughter to help our neighbor’s daughter with reading? Do I give my middle school son a small reward for teaching our neighbor’s seven-year-old to score a goal in soccer?
For many of us, the problem is just time. Any opportunity we have to give others more time can help to solve our people’s problems. Some of us only need another two or three hours a week to work more to solve our own problems.
It’s not as hard as we make it sound and we all we got.