It's MINE!!

My 4 year old went to some theater yesterday with her class at school and watched a play called “It’s mine”. The plot: Two brothers/sisters who refuse to share toys and fight all the time. PURE FICTION, as you can see. In the end, they all learn to share. At home, I realized the message had not sunk in.
So strange. We have this obsession with telling kids how important it is to share whatever they have, but as adults, we find it almost impossible. We like to stick to OUR things. We pretend we like to share.

-“Can I borrow that book?”
-“Sure!” (just make sure you give it back to me soon...)
-“You were not planning to read it right now?”
-“Oh, no, I have plenty of books to read...!” (actually, now that you have it, I’m finding it more and more interesting)

Now that I think of it, my father is this type of man. He seems to find the most interesting side to something WHEN you get your hands on it. Until then, that precious object could just be collecting dust, but now that you have it in your hands and start showing interest, it suddenly becomes precious. Childs act like that too (sorry, dad).
Child 1 has a ball. Nobody pays attention. He drops it.
Child 1 has a ball. Child 2 looks interested. He’ll never let go.
I guess the bottomline is: what’s the point of having something nobody wants? It’s probably not that good, right? But if YOU want it, it MUST be interesting.