Am I a Socialist? (An Easter Egg Crisis of Identity)
I went to an Easter egg hunt on Sunday.
Now, I need to begin by saying that I do not attend Easter egg hunts lightly. I carry with me a long and distinguished history of Easter-related trauma. My memories include small children being trampled like bargain shoppers on Black Friday, pastel eggs hoarded like gold bullion, and at least one adult who appeared ready to throw an elbow over a plastic bunny.
Easter egg hunts, in my experience, have historically been less about joy and more about early-stage capitalism.
Picture it: a field scattered with opportunity, and a group of small humans encouraged to grab as much of it as possible before someone else does. The strong thrive. The timid go home with three eggs and a lingering sense that life is unfair.
Frankly, it’s an excellent introduction to the American economy.
So imagine my surprise—my deep, spiritual, slightly unsettling surprise—when I attended this particular hunt and found… order.
Not just order. Equity.
Each child was assigned a color. Each color had exactly 20 eggs. Not 19 if you were slow. Not 42 if you were aggressive and had a wingspan. Twenty. Plus one golden egg, because even fairness can have a little sparkle.
And here’s the part that nearly made me clutch my metaphorical pearls: the children only hunted for their color.
No grabbing.
No hoarding.
No tiny oligarchs with overflowing baskets while others stood blinking in the dust.
Just children, calmly searching for what was theirs—and remarkably, what was theirs was exactly enough.
I stood there watching this unfold, waiting for chaos to erupt. Surely someone would break rank. Surely one ambitious toddler would decide that yellow eggs were simply too good to be left to the yellows.
But no.
They followed the system.
And then—this is where things took a turn—the children who had found all of their eggs began helping the others.
Helping.
I would like to pause here so we can all absorb that.
Children. Helping each other. Without a profit motive.
No invoices.
No consulting fees.
No “I’ll show you where the blue eggs are for 10% of your candy portfolio.”
They just… helped.
And I found myself standing there thinking a thought I did not expect to think:
Am I a socialist?
Now, before anyone clutches their pearls, let’s stay calm. I am not proposing we replace the stock market with jellybeans or redistribute Cadbury eggs at the federal level. Let’s not get carried away.
But I will admit this: there was something deeply satisfying about watching a system designed so that every child had what they needed—and no child was left out because they weren’t fast enough, tall enough, or aggressive enough.
There was dignity in it.
There was calm.
There was, dare I say it, a kind of peace.
And it made me think about how allergic we’ve become to the idea of “equal” in this country.
We hear words like socialism and immediately imagine long lines, gray buildings, and someone confiscating our decorative throw pillows. But what I saw on that field wasn’t oppression.
It was thoughtful design.
It was someone saying, “What if we made this work for everyone?”
And here’s where I will get just serious enough to make everyone slightly uncomfortable at brunch:
There are some things in life that should not depend on whether you were the fastest child in the field.
Healthcare, for example.
I have yet to meet a disease that politely checks your bank account before deciding whether to proceed. Illness does not reward hustle. Injury does not respect bootstraps.
And yet, we have built a system where access to care often depends on the same dynamics as a chaotic Easter egg hunt: who gets there first, who knows where to look, who has the resources to gather more.
It’s not charming when it’s happening to children with plastic eggs. It’s devastating when it’s happening to adults with real lives.
So standing there, watching children count their eggs—“I have 17… I need 3 more!”—and then watching others join in to help them find the rest, I couldn’t help but wonder:
What would it look like if we approached more parts of life this way?
Not everything, mind you. I am not suggesting we all receive identical wardrobes or that we abolish the thrill of finding a good parking spot. I remain firmly committed to the right to a well-earned advantage in the Costco checkout line.
But some things?
Some things feel less like competition and more like shared responsibility.
And perhaps the question isn’t “Am I a socialist?”
Perhaps the question is:
Where does fairness belong?
Because what I witnessed wasn’t about taking something away from one child to give to another. It was about designing the experience so that everyone had enough to begin with.
No one left empty-handed.
No one overwhelmed with excess.
Just enough—and the freedom to help others once you had it.
It was, in its own small, pastel-colored way, a vision of what we might be capable of when we stop assuming that someone has to lose for someone else to win.
Now, I’m not ready to rewrite the Constitution based on an Easter egg hunt.
But I will say this:
If a group of toddlers can figure out how to share the field, count what they have, and help each other find what’s missing…
Well.
It does raise some uncomfortable questions for the rest of us.
Julie Bolejack, MBA
”Bloom Again” book coming soon! So excited to share with you ❤️
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