Share your toys

At a meeting yesterday about forming a council to create "visionary" solutions in the Nashoba region, a woman from Ashburnham made an analogy that just made sense. You know, it was one of those times when you read or hear something an think to yourself: "Now why haven't I heard about this before?!"
This woman works with kids. And we all know that as kids, you must learn to share, to get along with the other children in your class (or at least tolerate them). One child gets time with a toy and if another child wishes to play with it, they either wait their turn or the children use it together. The teacher or parents doesn't immediately go running out the door to buy another of that toy so that both can have one.
Sharing is such an important part of a child's social life and parents and teachers seem to constantly stress this ideal. So if it is such an important teaching while we are in our developing stage, how come it doesn't carry on into our adult life?
Does every house need a swimming pool? A big screen tv with a bluray player? Does every town need its own senior center?
This woman merely pointed out to this room full of people the idea that we as adults can utilize this concept of sharing in developing solutions to our current economic and social problems. We must do it as kids, so why ever stop? There doesn't have to come a time in our life that we forgot that basic principal we all grew up on.