🌿 TREE 128: There are medals for participation

We live in conquest cultures obsessed with winning. Try and think of some part of public life that isn’t divided into winners and losers. What we call ‘winning’ is narrowly defined as defeating everyone else. This is reinforced constantly by tough-talking performance gurus who like to remind us that there are no medals for participation in real life.

Bull. Shit.

In pretty much everything that matters, participation is winning.

When you enjoy a beautiful meal with your family, who wins?
When you show up for a friend in need, who wins?
When you sort out your eating habits and start exercising, who wins?
When you create something useful, who wins?

The winners are the participants.

 And who was defeated? What a stupid question!

How about this one: When you give it everything and still fail but you use the failure as data to do it better next time round, who wins?

Why reduce life to cultural inventions of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’? Joining in with everything you have – that’s where the juice is.

Today’s email is not about whether or not competition is good or children’s participation trophies or dreamy socialism. It’s about having a foundational understanding that living is participating in fullness. It’s deeper and more profound than any of -isms we spend our lives arguing about.

Grow slowly.
Jeff

It’s like this, if it wasn’t about joining a cult or something equally creepy:

The Memory of TREE playlist – every song from every email: