There is a personal and individual way of looking at things.
Am I in shape? Am I fit enough? Am I firing on all cylinders? In the team sports there is an aspect in which the player ensures first and foremost that they are in prime condition. They appreciate that the team is needed to win, but there’s very much something of self first. For the manager/coach, there’s more of a focus on the whole working, not just the individual. It’s not primarily how am I doing, it’s about how are we doing.
However as things develop the individual can get a greater sense that their well-being is dependent on the well-being of others. As they learn to engage with others and become truly interdependent. As that happens so they identify themselves truly with others. What happens to the least of them happens to all of them. What affects one affects them all and energises others to support.
That can work on the sporting level or in working environments. It is even more wonderful when it springs forth naturally from the family setting and flows into other life interactions and relationships. Where there’s a real sense that life is not meant to just be about self-preservation. The sense of interaction and engagement becomes so intertwined from working side to side to covering each other back to back and loving life together face to face that true intimacy takes place. We really put each other’s needs as a priority and the care unspoken and expressed shows love supreme.
The thing about that love supreme is that it is not an end in itself. It is an invitation to get deeper into it and learn it for the unsearchable riches to be enjoyed there. Then to see those riches impact lives from the wide palette of existence around us.
Things are shaping up indeed when we grow from me to us and when what it is about us is how we learn to love and care, share and see that impact others.
(Photo by Benny Jackson on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 