I believe you should always reach for the last cookie.
Look at it. It’s waiting on you. Calling you to collect it, to consume it. It wants your attention.
You are not alone. There are others who want this cookie too.
You can feel it. Them. The others. The tension. The ones with the drool and eyes like daggers.
The tension of not wanting to be rude. The promise of being polite. Being seen as giving and sacrificial. Putting others first.
The tension of eating another one, when you’ve already had two.
The tension of not letting a good thing go to waste. The box can now be thrown away if you could just get rid of the cookie.
In the moment, you wait. You hesitate. Contemplating this tension. Then. The unthinkable happens. Someone else reaches in and takes it. It’s gone. The moment is lost.. You feel empty. Lost. Wishing you had reached first, but glad that the tension is gone.
Oh the emotional trauma this one little cookie has inflicted.
Next time. Reach for it. Charge through the resistance. Now that you have reached, you have an opportunity.
An opportunity to create a moment of sharing. For one cookie can become many.
A moment of delight in devouring it yourself.
A moment of true sacrifice. Taking and then giving that what you love away.
A conversation, a negotiation a reprisal. You’ve opened the door to connect and that’s what the cookie is all about anyway right? Reward, enticement into something sweet. So go ahead, reach for it. Let the sweetness of connection draw you in, but be prepared to have your hand slapped.