A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

Let’s support small together

Recently I was queuing in a farmers’ market near where I live, when I noticed a sticker that someone had put on a post reading “Let’s support small together”, and thought: “what a great philosophy”.

The sticker was presumably put there as a reminder that we can all do much to support small local traders, and help real people, who live in our own community, rather than supermarkets who cream off the profits to fund the extravagant lifestyles of the CEO, or pay dividends to anonymous shareholders, who have no interest in where we live.

One of the biggest problems of capitalism, is that we don’t have a maximum cap on individual wealth — we have a minimum wage, why not a maximum wealth? Did you know that eight men own as much wealth as four billion of the world’s population? Just think how different the lives of the poorest billion would be if that wealth were shared out more fairly! Where did we as individuals and societies lose our moral compass to the extent that we allow this to continue?

All in the same race — but make sure everyone wins

So much of the modern world seems to revolve around a “winner takes all” philosophy, that we can easily forget that we are all in the same race together, that we share the same planet we call home.

We can get caught up in the idea that everything is a competition to do better than others. And having won the race to get to a million dollars/pounds, or five million or ten million, rather than realise that we have enough, many people just keep running a race that no longer needs to be run.

How different things would be if we all grasped the concept of “enough”, and focussed on rather than endless competing to do better than others, we put our energies into co-operating to make sure everyone wins.

This doesn’t need to be hippy idealism, happy clappy evangelism, or communism by the back door. It would just makes the world a better place for everyone. Many nations without extreme inequality, like the Scandinavian nations, have lower average levels of crime and higher average levels of happiness. Many people get a real feeling of reward from helping others less fortunate. Rather than have a “win-lose” society, we could design all our societies to be “win-win”.

What goes around comes around — practise random acts of kindness

Quite late in life, I came across the expression “what goes around, comes around” and it is so true. If we do someone a good turn, it often comes back to us. All the way from the good manners of holding a door for the person behind, to the occasional display of unexpected generosity when someone “pays it forward”, paying for the next person in a queue.

So practise random acts of kindness and they will sometimes come back to you, or to one of your friends or relatives, often in the least expected way, or at a time when you are not anticipating it, perhaps when you are at your nadir, having a dreadful “Debbie Downer” of a day, and really need that help.

Just as humans have the capacity for untold cruelty and evil, we also have an extraordinary capacity to do good deeds. The kindness of strangers is a beautiful thing, to be nurtured and cherished: so much better for everyone than the alternatives we see so much of on the news programmes.

Small is beautiful

The same philosophy of helping everyone up the ladder can be applied on Medium as in the rest of life. Rather than just following the “top” writers, the people who already have gazillions of followers, it means much more to the novice member with only a couple of followers if you can follow them, and leave a nice, encouraging comment.

Even go out of your way to apply this principle, of helping the smallest most. If you want to find the members on Medium who would appreciate this most, they are often to be located in the “100 follower” topic group. We often love to support an underdog, so everyone wins.

So make this a motto: “support small together”. After all, the Medium megastars with hundreds of thousands of followers don’t need even more support, more people telling them how wonderful they are, but it would make a real difference to someone just starting out. This philosophy that small is beautiful goes back a long way:

A rising tide lifts all boats

There is also an expression that “a rising tide lifts all boats”. What it means, is that if things are going well, it is possible for everyone to win. Let’s all aim to win the race on Medium together, rather than constantly compete.

Of course there is only a limited size of “pie” to be shared out in terms of earnings, but earning a dollar means a lot more to a member new to the Partner Programme than it does to a Medium megastar.

If you want to see a heart-warming, if not heart-breaking film, showing how everyone can win the “race of life” together, this one may melt the coldest of hearts — if you are reluctant to click on random links, it shows children at a school sports day lining up, arm in arm, to help a child with a disability win a race -

How different the world could be if we could learn to be like that child’s lovely classmates! Where along the rocky road of life, did we lose our idealism and the kindness that those children display?

WIIFM — What’s in it for me?

I love collecting new words, phrases and acronyms, and recently came across a catchy acronym used by another writer to describe how to write winning articles — it uses the principle of “WIIFM”, or “What’s in it for me?” Of course up to a point that is why most of us, most of the time, choose to read an article. We want entertainment or useful information. And I have to say the article was a good one if you are trying to decide what to write about, to base your story around how to impart something to the reader. After all, as another saying goes, “people buy benefits”: we invest in what helps us.

However what if we turn this round, and make the acronym about helping friends? It still aims to achieve much the same, but is perhaps a nicer way of phrasing it. So rather than WIIFM, the acronym might be “HCIHMF” — “How can I help my friends?”

So let’s all aim to win the race of life together, arm in arm like the children in the video, remember that kindness often comes back to us, and “supporting small together” can help create a better world where everyone benefits.

To join a new Facebook group “Medium Matters” where writers can support each other and share articles.

Mastadon- you can find me here