Can I have the TV room for a bit?
The question was innocent enough. But it made my blood curdle.
After all, I had been entrenched. Posted up on the couch, watching television. And now, I was getting booted from my perch, just so that my sister could watch her dumb show?
No way, no how. I refused.
My sister stomped off, quickly returning with my parents in tow. They explained that I had to share the TV room, and that meant ceding it in this instance. It was the decent thing to do, and the only thing to do.
I grumbled and stomped off to my room. The day was ruined.
Our society is of two minds.
We believe in individualism. We applaud self-sufficiency, initiative, and action.
Yet, we also believe in collectivism. In coming together to bask in the glow of our individual exploits.
I suppose this paradox mirrors that of nature. Even the most ancient of humans balanced hunting and gathering in their daily tasks.
And our own national lineage – that of settlers from faraway lands confronting a rugged terrain – also required such a shift.
But this dichotomy has not aged well.
The modern world has tipped the scales toward the individual. These days, it’s easier to strike out on our own without encountering a grizzly bear or a gang of bandits. We can get what we need and fend off danger.
Still, our collective tendencies have stuck around. More for tradition’s sake than anything else.
There are still plenty of restaurants that offer family-style meals. There are still holidays centered on mingling with loved one. There are still pressures to align ourselves with groups – whether civic, religious, or social.
The dichotomy this creates can be dizzying. We’re forced to tiptoe between two extremes — between go get it and let’s share.
It’s not easy to walk this tightrope. And the penalties for a misstep can be severe.
Be the CEO of your own life.
I can’t recall where I first heard that advice. But I’ve taken it to heart.
When it comes to my day-to-day, I take a business-like approach. I manage budgets, plan meals, and set actionable goals. I’m intentional about how I spend my time and who I share company with.
I lean on individualism to execute on all this. I put a lot on my own shoulders just to get by. But as an introvert, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Still, my quest does hit choppy waters from time to time. This is most notable when my journey barges through society’s collectivist tripwires.
Perhaps I stay in during a holiday. Perhaps I don’t eat anything at a banquet-style feast. Perhaps I duck out of a get-together before a board game is unfurled on the table.
I catch an inordinate amount of grief for these actions. I’m accused of not being a team player. I’m accosted for hurting others’ feelings. Or I’m told that no one should be alone on an occasion like this – essentially, that my own desires to do just that are invalid.
These rebukes are to be expected.
Marketing guru Seth Godin has frequently defined culture as People like us do things like this. And my actions often fly in the face of that mantra. Of course I’m going to hear about it.
The remedy to this situation might seem straightforward. I could just suck it up. I could share more, participate more, prioritize the collective over the invididual.
But it’s never that simple, is it?
I often think back to the day when I was booted from the TV room. It still gnaws at me.
Whatever I missed when I ceded the couch wasn’t all that important. And my sister was right in asking me to share the family television.
But the was a subtle demand under that ask is what bugs me.
Namely, the demand for a sacrifice.
For me to share TV access that day, I’d have to sacrifice control of the remote. This reality was unambiguous.
And this latent demand was far from unique. In fact, it underlies many other sharing scenarios we encounter.
Preparing for a long weekend? Get ready to account for who you spent your time with.
Attending a banquet? Be prepared to sacrifice your dietary preferences.
Participating in a social function? Don’t expect control over the agenda.
Sharing and sacrifice are intertwined. We might only speak to one half of the equation, but the other half is omnipresent.
This arrangement might be well-intentioned. But it’s not doing any of us any favors.
And the evidence is piling up.
In the early days of the COVID pandemic, civic officials shared a familiar refrain.
We all need to sacrifice our routines for the common good.
The specifics of the sacrifice varied by the situation. Sometimes it referred to putting on a face mask in public or staying home entirely. Other times it meant cancelling gatherings or sequestering ourselves from loved ones.
This was all to help keep a novel virus at bay. And yet, the refrain landed like a pile of bricks.
Some people still wanted to gather and to share in tradition, virus risk be damned. Others were cowering in fear of infection, and pointing the finger at anyone who didn’t share their view.
Divides widened. Trust plummeted. And we’re still dealing with the fallout, all these years later.
Scholars will likely spend years determining why this civic communication went so wrong. But I think the answer lies in the first five words of their refrain: We all need to sacrifice.
Sacrifice, you see, is a personal act. When we give something up, we feel it viscerally.
No one else can even pretend to understand that feeling. That loss is ours alone to bear.
As such, the most effective sacrifices are intrinsically driven. We feel the pull of a higher calling. And we part with something we care about to meet that calling.
Sharing is a natural biproduct of this process. But the choice to sacrifice — that comes from us.
This process can’t be reverse engineered. Telling us to sacrifice just won’t get the same buy-in. Neither will hiding such demands behind the virtues of sharing.
I’m not quite sure we fully recognize this point. And that needs to change.
It’s time for us to explicitly link sharing and sacrifice. And it’s time to make these attributes opt-in, rather than obligatory.
These actions won’t fix everything. But they’ll cauterize the wounds of our current approach. And they’ll plant the seeds for a more sustainable culture of sharing.
These are results we can stand behind. Let’s make them reality.