Talents and possessions

I have been doing a lot of thinking recently, and in the course of many chats to friends, have discovered that we all have similar ideas. This is possibly why we are friends in the first place, of course! I have been thinking about community, and how we are all interlinked, and how we need to pool our talents, and possessions too, to a certain extent. Like, for instance, how many times do we use lawn mowers? Once a week at the most, (except in my case, as I have NO lawn), and why don't we club together, buy one and share? How many of us have ladders? How often to we use them? You see where I am going here. The more I thought about it, the more I realised we are already doing it in so many ways. Simon has a tyre pump thingy which automatically blows up your tyres. I can and do borrow it when I need to. I have a ceiling paint roller, which goes all over the place. It could write volumes on what it has witnessed! I have a gazebo from the wedding, which likewise anyone can use. Then I remembered how, years ago, 4 of us bought boxes of cheap wine glasses at Ikea and how we always use them combined for parties. I bought 72 place settings of cheap cutlery for my 50th party, and 10 serving dishes. They too can be and have been used over and over again. So without realising it, we seem to have started out on the combining possessions idea. Just think how much further it could go. I do remember when a few of us were doing renovations or extensions, and how we laughingly contemplated buying our own scaffolding. It would have been cheaper than all the hiring we paid for.

And talents. As in sharing and using what we can each do. We all have so many more unique talents than we realise. I pondered, many years ago, having a list of talents in this village, and how they could be bartered, for example, an old lady loves knitting, I don't knit, but I could do her garden. Or simply to have somewhere local to go to give my business. There again, in chats, we realised how much we are already sharing some of our talents. When redecorating is needed, a group of us go and do it. We have such fun at the same time, and it is much nicer painting someone else's home! We put up coving, repair vacuum cleaners. Change tyres. Give away jams, scones etc we bake. We make quilts or blankets. We feed cats and dogs, and move sheds. We give each other seedlings. We give professional advice. We act as counsellors for each other. We help landscape gardens. We do the teas at funerals. We help each other move. We help in schools. We train sports teams. We do the decorations for big celebrations. We water gardens. We alter clothes, and we babysit. We grow things to share.

But how much more could we do?? The sky is the limit. I happen to have an exceptionally great group of friends, and we all seem to be of like mind here. We really could make an immense difference if we consciously expanded our use of what we have been blessed with into the community.