Commitment

There's an old metaphor that gets used a lot to explain the difference between involvement and commitment. You need look no further than your morning breakfast of milk, bacon and eggs. The cow and the chicken were involved in providing the milk and the eggs, but the pig was committed to provide the bacon.

Last month my youngest played the cat in her preschool class's production of "The Little Red Hen". You know the story. The hen looks all over town to find some help to make some bread but nobody is willing to sacrifice anything to make it happen. Yet when the bread is done they all want to take part in the feast. It's amazing how timeless some of this fables actually are. I think I've had to face this situation much more as an adult than I ever did as a child.
Lately I've been dealing with a lot of people who haven't even been willing to provide milk or eggs or help at all in baking the bread and it's very frustrating. They don't even come close to the Pigs level of commitment. Yet I'm sure that some of these same people will be the ones knocking on the door to participate once the aroma of the bread starts wafting out the windows.
Perhaps they all should have paid a little bit more attention when they were in preschool. Or maybe they just need to have a 5 year old tell them the story.