...nice to have

As I’ve blogged, I’m aware that I’m frequently tempted to use phrases like ‘for most of us’ but actually I have no idea whether others do actually experience things as I do. In fact I love that life in my world is shades of grey, whereas others maybe see things completely as black and white. A Yes or No, a wrong or right or perhaps love or hate. My rationale behind blogging was to discover and explore some of my everyday thoughts, for me to understand myself more – so for me, this process has become a Necessity, which is what I have been thinking about today.

In my mind, I believe that most of us as we grow up categorise life into Necessities versus Nice to Have’s. The things in life we need versus those we can do without. Maybe even the Black and White versus the Grey. But this led me to wondering if we are simply lacking the vision, desire and ambition to have the whole spectrum?

Children are perfect ‘whole spectrum’ examples. They don’t see things as ‘nice to have’ everything is a ‘must have’, a necessity. “All my friends have it”, “It’s only X hundred pounds” or “I have to do at least 4 after school activities on the same day and you can drive me North, South, East and West”. If you’re a parent, you might recognise this type of mantra.

So what is a Nice to Have and what is a Necessity clearly varies by individual and perhaps context.

This struck me the other day when a friend mentioned that they considered their role a Nice to Have within their organization. It made me feel sad. My friend was clearly looking at the cost benefit analysis (black & white) but hadn’t perhaps considered the whole spectrum, including the grey.

So maybe we shouldn’t be so quick cast things as Nice to Have’s.

If we look in the bible, there are many examples where Jesus appears to do things that wouldn’t stand up to the cost vs. benefit analysis. Had He simply done the big things maybe many more amazing miracles could have been achieved but Jesus saw that sometimes Necessity can be the Nice to Have’s - the small or more insignificant things. The things we don’t always see value in… encouragement, inspiration, motivation, a kind action, a touch, a look, a smile…

What might be Nice to Have to me might be Necessity for another. Or indeed my Nice to Have today could be tomorrow’s Necessity. So black, white & grey can be all be good, let’s choose to live ‘whole spectrum’ lives.