“A flower does not compete.
It simply opens.”

The world we grew up in taught us
that life is competition.

That if someone wins,
someone else must lose.

That humans are selfish by nature,
and only external rules keep us in check.

But this is not true.

A child does not want to be better than others —
they want to connect.

To play.
To share.
To wonder.

Nature does not compete either.

A forest is not a hierarchy.
It is a system that breathes together.

Competition is not human nature —
it is conditioning created by scarcity-based societies.

Cooperation is our original pattern.

When a person is not afraid,
not anxious,
not under threat,

they do not want to defeat others —
they want to unfold.

This is why the logic of Collective Capitalism and the Human Growth Model
returns the focus to where it originally belonged:

to flourishing.

Because when there is safety,
when there is connection,
when there is space to open,

a person does not perform.

They bloom.

And this kind of blooming creates more value
than any form of competition or pressure ever could.

A good system does not draw starting lines.

It creates the conditions for opening.

I was reminded of this through a personal memory.

I loved art classes in secondary school.

We were given a framework and a theme,
but the concept and execution were left to us.

I remember painting initials.
We were supposed to use rounded letters,
because the emphasis was meant to be in the centre.

Mine was the letter Y.

On the left side, a block of flats with flowers and sunlight,
painted in bright tempera.

At the top, bombers — drawn with oil pastels.

On the right side, the same block of flats, destroyed,
rendered in graphite.

They eventually asked to keep the drawing for a school exhibition.
It is no longer even in the school.

But it is very much alive in me.

Looking back, I see what was really happening.

I did not want to outperform anyone.
I did not want to meet an imagined standard.

I simply allowed something from within me
to come through
and gave it form.

This is the natural state of being human.

Not competition.
But expression.

The duality of light and destruction in that drawing
is the same duality we still see in the world today.

And the fact that I dared to hold both in one image
points to a deeper truth:

you do not need to defeat anyone
to be real.

It is enough to open.

A flower does not compete.

It opens —
and the world becomes richer because of it. ❤️