The Rats Seem To Be Winning The Rat Race
So let's start over, go slower, and co-create a supportive community and better world
The beginning of a new year is an opportunity for a fresh start. We vow to do things that will make this year better than last year. But many people who make New Year’s Resolutions abandon them within a month - so many that the second Friday of January is known as “Quitter’s Day.”
It’s hard to sustain the initial excitement and energy associated with a new beginning for long. Especially when that fresh start is more challenging than we thought it would be.
And it’s even harder to stay motivated to work for change on a larger scale. So much is happening so fast that it’s tempting to stay too busy to have time to think. Or to even be aware of what’s going on and how it’s affecting us.
We can choose to create a better world
We get constant reminders from society that our worth depends on our productivity, so the busier we are the better we are. We learn that we must do whatever it takes to “get ahead” and that “winners never quit.”
But what if there is more to life than winning? What if the prize for winning isn’t worth the price we pay to be in the race? What if we chose to cooperate instead of compete and share instead of hoard? What if we stopped blaming and shaming and started listening and finding common ground? What if we prioritized our collective wellbeing over increasing the wealth and power of a few privileged individuals or countries?
A place to start
Some of those “what ifs” can become “how can we” questions that we answer together. I’m creating an online community to foster ongoing conversations about questions like these.
Our first Zoom gathering is this Sunday, January 11, at 1 PM Central.
We’ll brainstorm ideas about ways to cooperate, find common ground, and prioritize our collective wellbeing. We’ll support each other’s efforts to move from talking about the kind of world we want to live in to taking actions to help create that world, one small step at a time.
Paid subscribers will see the Zoom link below, get a reminder email, and be able to comment on this and subsequent posts to continue the conversation. We’ll have live Zoom gatherings on the second Sunday of each month.
Join the conversation
If you’d like to join these community gatherings on Zoom and participate in the ongoing conversations in the comments, subscribe now. If you become a paid subscriber before our gathering this Sunday, you’ll get an email with the link to attend.