This past week was another wild one. It included a holiday, Inauguration Day (a peaceful one!), and many dynamic planning conversations.

One of those conversations has kind of taken hold in my head, twisting and turning as I work to find a way forward. Without giving away too much, the exchange was related to an opportunity for collaboration that we have at the Organic Farm School this year. Someone offered to move one of our outreach efforts forward in a very meaningful and generous way, not only taking a significant amount of work off my plate, but also creating something much more robust than my current skill set would allow.

As I shared this with my team, a few questions and concerns were raised, which is part of healthy discussion around anything new. But what fascinated me was a significant push back against anyone doing anything for us that would lead to a significant benefit for that person in the future.

Allowing the discussion to spread out a bit, it became clear that the issue was two-fold: one, that the person I perceive as being very generous toward us, the one offering to do something with and for us, was in effect the one being given a very generous opportunity that is not part of our organizational focus; and two, that in the end they would actually take something of value from us that we could not control.

We will continue to work through this. My sense is that a new kind of collaboration is needed in these rapidly changing times, and that more than ever it has to be grounded in trust and generosity. That such collaboration naturally leads to benefits for each participant and that there is beauty and mystery in watching how that happens and moves out into the world.

And yet, the divisiveness of the past few years has habituated many of us to be skeptical of the motivation of others…to be convinced that if someone gains something, then someone has to lose something.

We are taught as little ones to share freely, certainly a key element of collaboration yet an attribute many of us lose practice with over time. I’ll be looking for how this kind of giving shows up in adults this next week. But I’m now wondering if we also learn somewhere along the line that sharing creates benefit for both the giver and the receiver? That genuine sharing is a capacity builder for everyone involved, creating new opportunities that move beyond our control even as they can expand our reach. I’ll be looking even harder for examples of that.

I’d love to hear about your observations…