It’s your turn.
You go first, you have fewer items in your basket.
No please, after you.
I’ll get up with the baby tonight.
I’ve got this, you paid last time.
These words sound good, don’t they? It’s worth pausing for a moment to check in, and reflect on how often we hear these words…are they more often said by us, or to us?
I love the story of how pearl divers search in pairs. Without scuba tanks or regulators, one waits at the surface tending to the lines of the other who walks the ocean bottom searching for treasures. The underwater diver explores until the surface partner tugs the line, and then up they come. Together, they compare stories and examine their pearls.
The next day, they switch places. The surface partner dives, while the other waits on top, tending the lines and watching the time.
These divers teach us a valuable lesson. A lesson about working together and the miracle of trust. In any partnership, be it a friend, spouse, neighbor, sibling, business partner, we must take turns. We must, at times be the one on the surface, counting the time and holding the line while our partner dives freely. And when it’s our turn to dive, we can trust that we are safe.
If we really are all connected, we must live as if we are in partnership with every other living being.
Today let’s practice taking turns…
