Sharing – a wonderful life lesson

As a child how often were to you told to “Share”? It could have been your toys or even your snack. At the time I remember thinking that sharing was not always fair because you earned what you had and the other person didn’t so why should you have to share with them. But, then after learning that the experience of sharing something was worth way more than the item you were sharing, it became something that you just did, and actually like doing. All of sudden, by sharing, you experienced it through not only your eyes, but through the eyes of the person you were sharing with, and they could make you see things that you never could have alone. What a wonderful life lesson.

So are we a society sharing our planet like we were taught as children? A popular bumper sticker that I saw recently seemed to sum up the answer, ‘Whoever dies with the most toys, wins!’ That doesn’t sound like the mantra of a society who shares. Fortunately this isn’t the attitude of everyone, but it does seem like we have forgotten how to share. Take the following experience I had recently:

My wife and I take occasional walks in a beautiful natural park-like setting in which there is an abundance of wildlife including chipmunks, squirrels, fox, deer, and lots of birds. Just outside a building was an area that was a nice natural setting of trees that was a wonderful area for the animals to forage and live in. Well, one day we were walking and noticed the grounds keepers had torn down some of the trees, and raked all the leaves and growing material off the ground so far down that all that was left was bare earth. I didn’t immediately understand why they would have done such a thing, but I was hopeful that they had some master plan that I was going to be good for all. Well, I was wrong. The purpose was simply to produce an area that was manicured and planted with grass which our society deems beautiful.

So, how is this experience an example of our society forgetting how to share? Well, for one, we took an area that we were sharing with nature and turned it into something that is pretty much just viewed as good by our society. One could of course argue that some animals like the ‘robin’ will like this grassy area better so therefore we are now sharing with creatures like this, but one has to now consider the maintenance cost of this newly transformed area. Before this area had no maintenance cost at all since nature was doing all the work. Now, though, the lawn will need to be mowed, raked, and watered, the cost of which falls to our society and most likely causes more damage to the environment by using gasoline for the mowers and leaf-blowers, and toxic fertilizer and pesticides. All of this cost and trouble just because we couldn’t share our space, our environment with the rest of nature. We just have to make everything to our societies liking and can’t see the natural beauty in what is shared with nature.

We in the United States are very fortunate to have all we do, but it is important to know that we must share what we have with all around us, just as our parents taught us to do. By doing so we will set an examples for others, and leave a planet to the next generations of all species that is better than the one we started with. Then again, this is just Life According to Troy.