Heart Pocket Word for the Day is Cooperation!

The word from my heart pocket is Cooperation.

Play Ball!

It's a great way to learn cooperation. We learn teamwork when we play team sports. We call it harmony when we play in the orchestra. The greatest ballplayers and the finest divas know that cooperation creates the best performance.

We want our team to win. We want to lift our audiences out of their seats with applause. We hope for the committee to hear the words we so carefully prepared. Most of all,  we want cooperation to get the best result. 

To cooperate isn't always about agreeing or getting our way. The action of cooperation is collaboration; a working together to make something happen. One of the greatest examples of cooperation is with the family. This requires a high level of understanding and is usally driven by feelings of love or devotion. The action is collaboration; the essence is synergy, symbiosis, harmony. 

It is beautiful to experience.

One of my favorite parts of cooperation is how I feel when I do it. It's a very personal gift to me for doing my part. I love pulling a show together. It's fun coming up with ideas for a project and working with others to make it the best it can be. People are so creative and get inspired by each other when they work together to an end result. Cooperation. It's a present, wrapped by many hands and hearts and heads.

Observe little ones at play. They figure out how to get the job done. They might have already learned from example how to lead or to manipulate or to avoid participation. They may be afraid to try because of disapproval from the group. They might bully others to have a form of participation. They may use natural instincts and inspire the group to want to work together for the sake of the goal. See if you can find yourself as you observe. Do you like what you see? It's easy to become more of who we want to be when we have the desire.

I take short vacations with the same group of women a few times each year. What a wonderful group of team players! The common goal is for each of us to have the best time we can. No matter what, we bend and stretch as needed because we love each other so much.

I relate to the word harmony because I am a musician. I have experienced it most when I was the soloist. That's not because I felt elevated or better. I blended my voice with the other instruments to become one. Soft and loud, staccato and notes that soar. Making beautiful music requires listening and full participation. Cooperation.

To be good at anything we do is about listening, trying, learning, building, practicing, cooperating.

Sports figures talk about cooperation with words like teamwork, mutual assistance, team spirit, morale, joint effort. Politics and Education use semantics like bipartisanship, community, reciprocity and co-administration. Every group has words to express cooperation. Those who have experienced its benefits know it is one of the greatest and most powerful heart tools available to us. 

True cooperation is a mark of greatness. It is mature and it is one of the best life tools we can give our children.

It begins with example.