Shop Hop and Sesame Street

Over the last few weeks our shop has been participating in something called Shop Hop.  If you are not familiar with Shop Hop, I can only described it as a quilter’s Black Friday sale stretched over two weeks and twelve shops with games and drawings and giveaways and prizes.  It’s crazy, but fun.  What strikes me most about shop hop is how all these different shops can come together and cooperate in a common aim.  This would be almost unheard of in other stores.  One would hardly expect Wal-Mart, K-mart and Target to come together for one massive sale, even on Black Friday.  There is too much competition for there to be any cooperation.

This may be a result of being raised on Sesame Street, but I have often wondered if the spirit of cooperation is more effective then the spirit of competition.  Granted, competition has its place.  It can inspire us to heights that we may not aspire to otherwise.  It’s great to want to do better and it’s great when another person’s successes inspire us to do just that.  The problem comes when we start to mistake those we compete with as an enemy.  This is one reason I have such a hard time with politics.  I can’t help thinking more could get done if politicians spent less time demonizing the other party and more time listening to them.  Maybe it is naive of me, but I think more could get done if they had a spirit of cooperation.  Perhaps they could even find solutions rather than problems.

Even if this idea doesn’t work on a national scale, I still think it can on an individual scale.  How much less road rage would there be if we all realized that we are all trying to get from point A to point B?  How much more could we accomplish if we stop seeing other people’s successes as a threat to our own accomplishments?  How much more tolerance and acceptance would there be if we could see that we are all trying to do our best to make it through in this crazy world?  How would it change our own lives if we saw the people around us as allies instead of enemies?  How would that be?  Maybe it isn’t too late for all of us to learn a little from Sesame Street.