Kay:
Hello there, Questers, and welcome back. We hope you’re feeling wonderful and full of gratitude after Thanksgiving yesterday. Today is, yes, Friday, November 26th, and this is episode 475. Now here in the US, this is known as Black Friday, a shopping extravaganza kickoff to the Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday craziness that’s about to be the next four days of capitalistic retail extravaganza. In the middle of this, we have a really fantastic quote and reminder for you today from an ancient Greek philosopher Plato.
Shi:
Plato tells us, “Seeking out the welfare of our fellow men and women we find ours.” Now, got to love the principle behind this quote here and you know, this is straight-up ancient Greek wisdom right here. Plato’s probably one of the most oft-quoted philosophers of all time. Certainly, brings some longevity and breadth, and depth to it. But I love behind this quote here, this notion, and I saw a really interesting story recounted on social media and it showed this picture of a high school hallway filled with balloons. A high school teacher asked all of the students, like 400 students, to blow up a balloon and write their name on it, and then throw it out into the hallways. And so, you’ve got this hallway full of balloons, and then they all got five minutes to go try and find their balloon. After five minutes, almost no one had their balloon. Now the teacher said, okay, the next assignment is to pick any balloon and then go find that person and give them their balloon and within five minutes, everybody was holding their own balloon. It’s this metaphor about how, when you help others, you help yourself. I just love the metaphor and I love the visual of it and I think that’s precisely what Plato is pointing out here.
Kay:
This is such an apt message for today of all days, because traditionally Black Friday, at least here in the US is an S-show, if you know what I mean. People clamoring over each other stampeding into stores. There are usually at least a couple of deaths that happen every year on this day as people seek out their own welfare in the name of purchasing goods instead of caring for their fellow men and women. We’ve heard crazy stories, everything from people fighting over sweaters, getting punched over TVs. I’ve only been out once on Black Friday, and it was enough for me the way everybody was grabbing at things, and it was such an interesting time. So, especially following a day of love and togetherness and preceding a season where we do seek out the welfare of our fellow men and women, oftentimes through charity in the Christmas and holiday season. So, just had to bring that in here, Shi, because it’s an interesting day to have such a good quote like this.
Shi:
Right. I heard a comedian say what are you all doing with the TVs you buy every year? There’s this mad rush on Black Friday TVs, but doesn’t everyone still have one lot from last year or two years ago? So, just a funny anecdote there. But to bring us back to this quote here from Plato, I love this imagery, and I love this message and I think that it’s a helpful reminder. Almost all of the great thinkers have told us something along these lines. Zig Ziglar famously, as the contemporary example, said, “Help enough other people get what they want. and you’ll get what you want,” is demonstrating the same principle. For most of us, definitely myself included, being selfish and having an ego and looking out for yourself is ingrained into you.
You’ve got the id and the ego and the super-ego. That’s the id, it’s the animalistic part you were born with. That is the piece that says I’m the most important thing. We see it in babies. We see it in toddlers. It’s the first part of you. That animalistic instinct to survive is the first thing that emerges from your personality because survival was pretty dang important for most of our history. But as we learn to be an organism like a society where it’s all of us contributing together to a greater good, it makes a quote like this even more powerful because we understand that we’ll get so much more when we give so much more, and that when we do that, we’ll get it and we can find that welfare or happiness or success or gifts or abundance by helping others get theirs.
Kay:
You know, last year, one of the most meaningful things that Shila and I got to participate in during the holidays was an adoptive family program through our local county, where families in need submit things that they need for Christmas. You help them get toys for their children, do the wrapping for these people. You hear into their stories; you see their Christmas lists which can be heartbreaking. But I’ll say, honestly Shi, I don’t remember too much of what I received last Christmas. But what I do remember so, so clearly was both the experience of picking out the things for our families, receiving them, wrapping them, giving them, and getting the responses back from them in the end. So, really demonstrating this Plato quote sometimes that welfare isn’t about your physical welfare or your material welfare, but your internal, emotional, and spiritual welfare.
Shi:
I’m glad that you brought that forward. To remind you of what Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher tells us here on this Black Friday, “Seeking out the welfare for our fellow men and women we find ours.”
Kay:
So, we’ve got a Fri-yay Quest for you, a Black Fri-yay Quest. We want you to perform an act of kindness today. Yes. Go out and show a little extra patience to somebody or help someone who is enduring hardship on purpose. We promise you by seeking out that welfare of someone else, you will find some welfare for yourself. Are you ready?
Shi:
Let’s quest!