The lockdowns of last year and the working from home of 2021 has taught me a whole lot about living with my family.  The economy started to look more e-commerce and in some cases, brick and mortar stores were closed entirely.  Ecommerce is now the main way people buy anything.  The reality of this led many people to be stuck at home for days, weeks, and months on end.  Many people were told to work from home and we all learned to live and work together at our homes.  This was a certainly complicated affair especially with families that had kids.  But what we really learned was how to share.  The ability to share our lives with each other in all aspects was hard, rewarding, and taught us many lessons.  The one lesson that I truly learned was that good things need to be shared.  Candy boxes are key to this because my wife kills me if I don’t share a favorite treat.

Family is great at reminding you of this and my wife did it all the time.  We worked together every single day in the same home.  We ended up working in separate rooms and that is good because our companies are rivals. Yes, it still worked out just fine.  But through this working and living together many lessons came to light.  What we found was that if we were going to be having fun, that it was best to share.  That is because fun and joy are hard to come by when you are doing the same thing over and over day in and day out.  So by sharing the fun times we are able to keep each other happy. Keeping each other sedated and happy is key!

Food and cooking brought us together.  Many times we would make a great snack and eat it all up by ourselves.  This was not intentional at first, but after months we realized that sharing was just fun as eating it ourselves.  This went double for when we ended up breaking upon one of our favorite candy boxes and simply downing it all alone.  We both felt the effects of being left out of that small amount of joy.  The sadness that it brought us was enough to know that the next time we would simply share.  It was such a small thing we learned as children. Now we know that sharing could be the difference between life and death. 

This is not just about treats and we all know it. The joy of getting something that my spouse would enjoy was honestly just as fun for me even if I didn’t like that snack as much.  Really this time of year brought us back to the beginning of how simple things like food could bring us together.  We learned to share more and share in the experiences of the little things.  It was the small gifts of shopping and getting more of what your spouse likes and not yourself and it brought a great amount of joy to us both. So don’t forget about the small things in life.  Snacks are important and are usually better when shared. So don’t be afraid to give a little away because it can really bring everyone together.  That is what we learned last year.