Once or twice a week I take my lacrosse stick, gloves and balls and head out to the tennis courts near my house to practice.

The tennis players despise me and don’t appreciate my presence there. They’ve used excuses from “please leave we’re having a tournament” to “you’re making too much noise” to get me to leave.

All the while, I am completely out of their way, often leave instantly when they want my court, and always make sure to throw their balls back to them when they’re anywhere near me.

I think two factors bother them. The first is that I’m not actually playing tennis, but lacrosse. The other is that it’s just me- a single person- taking up a whole court. That’s why I’m all too happy to share the court with them. I’m perfectly happy shooting along the red colored sidelines, well out of their way.

Two nights ago, I was playing in one of the courts, when a guy coyly came up to me and wondered if he could hop on the court as well. Naturally I said I’d be happy to share the court with him.

He pulled out a cricket bat, some wickets and some balls and thanked me like I owned the joint and was magnanimous for sharing with him. He was practicing bowling along the other sideline of the court, using its length while I used its width.

Shortly thereafter, a friend of his joined, and they were practicing together. About 5 minutes later, a mother and 4 children looked into our court, full of desire to play tennis on our court. They wouldn’t dare ask if they could hop on, but I could see it in their demeanor.

I turned to the two cricket players and said that I didn’t see why these 5 folks couldn’t just join and use the tennis courts while we stayed on the perimeter. The guy said sure, and we waved the people over to our court. Ecstatically, the kids hopped on and played around right beside us. It was a full house (we were later joined by one of the kids’ father, making us 9 people) but it was also so lively, inclusive and social.

Sure, I didn’t have as much room to run around and shoot, but that really wasn’t the point. The point was that the sun was going to set, we would all have to leave for home pretty soon, and there was no reason we couldn’t all just get along and enjoy this limited resource while there was still light. Besides, it wasn’t like there was no room to play; it is a total misconception that we need all that room to play.

The situation reminded me very much of my childhood, when I used to play soccer with dozens of people in a small playground area in Israel. Within short running distance there were basketball players right next to us, as there was only 1 hoop, and of course the hide-and-seekers and tag players were also sharing our court with us. We never thought twice about the court belonging to anyone of us, it seemed only natural that the resources were scarce and we all wanted to do our own thing and would have to accept being so close to each other.

This whole episode made me wonder why we’ve become so possessive, exclusive, and snooty about public resources for which we feel so entitled. We have to have the resources we want, when we want them, we don’t want to share them, and we feel so isolated so much of the time. And why make all these unnecessary rules about who can use the courts when we’re all harmlessly having fun and doing no damage to anything?

The solution has always seemed obvious to me – let’s share the limited resources and let everyone feel included and have fun while we still can.