Community, Resource Sharing, and the Magical Equation.

Last night I received a text from my friend asking me if I remembered what her Netflix password was and something inside of me stretched into a big smile.

I love that she asked.

Not because she has shared her account with me for over a year now which I am regularly grateful for, but because I spend a lot of time thinking about community, including one of the gifts of community: resource sharing.

Resource sharing as I see it, is about making each other’s days easier, effortlessly.

I have something sitting in my cupboard that is going to elevate your Tuesday night soup to a whole new level and it is going to cost me pretty much nothing to bring you a pinch of it.

You may have the name of a great plumber which is going to save me lots of time and energy in getting my shower fixed.

And on and on.

As we go through life, we accumulate information, tools - and yes, spices. We don’t all accumulate the same ones of course and what a joy it is to be able to share them, to make each other’ lives sweeter, more connected too.

I have felt this way for as long as I can remember but it has become more precious since I have moved to a place where I knew no one. Getting here in January, I was so grateful that someone lent me a blanket. And also shared with me the name of the local vet - along with how to get there.

For the first few weeks, I had nothing much to contribute and I was firmly anchored on the receiving end of the resource-sharing. I leaned into that, knowing that as soon as I could, I would hop over to the other side.

That moment came as I turned the last page of a good book I was reading and thought that hey, someone might enjoy it too. So I posted a photo of the cover on the local FB group and a few hours later met the woman who became my very good friend. She and I are masterful at resource sharing.

I can’t even count the number of times when someone sharing a phone number, a medicinal herb, or a good teacher with me has impacted my life in the last four years of this strange and wonderful journey.

Community is powerful. I can add so much to your life and you to mine. It can take so little for me to lift you up today and for you to do it for me tomorrow.

And that’s the really fun part: the magical mathematical equation.

My son and I coined this process years ago while going through a drive-thru bank window. Waiting for our receipt, I noticed that the teller seemed sick with a cold and so along with the pen she had lent me, I passed her a cough drop I had in my purse. She smiled warmly, thanked me, and was unwrapping the cough drop before I started my car.

On an investment scale of 1 to 10, it was probably a 1. It took pretty much no effort for me to reach into my bag and hand her the cough drop. On the receiving end, combining the soothing effect of honey and menthol AND feeling seen and cared for, I would say she might have been at a 7.

BIG Return On Investment.

On the way home, we talked about that. I introduced my child to the ROI acronym and we talked about how it looked in everyday life. We played with how easy it can be to make someone’s day and also have someone make ours.

The math stuck.

When we dance around with this math as a community, I believe we can move mountains, or maybe leave them just where they are and plant acres of sunflowers all over them.

We can heal each other, make each other laugh, fix toilets, and make delicious soup.

It’s a Super Power.