Becoming Brilliant!

Facing Forward

Its official. The "economic crisis" has come to my home town of Beacon, NY. In, "A Town Reborn Faces a New Threat", The New York Times reports that business is dwindling and shops are closing. This sucks. I love my town, and I want it to thrive. No one seems to know what the next move is. We're in the dark here, as towns are all across America, and around the world.

It seems like a really bad and scary thing. Particularly since the institutions that have illuminated our lives for so long-like banks and schools and the government-admit to being just as stumped as we are. There appears to be very little light at the end of the tunnel.

What we're seeing (or not seeing), though,  may be more a function of the direction we're facing than of the problems themselves. In the throws of these unprecedented challenges, it no longer works to face backward, to practice historical thinking. We're experiencing a discontinuity, where our returns are diminishing, even as we put more and more energy into our existing systems. We've reached a place, pretty much across the board, where the old ways of doing things no longer work, and the new ways of doing things haven't shown up yet. Some call it "the void", a good name I think, and it's a tough place to be, especially with kids to feed and a mortgage to pay.

I'd to wave a magic wand and make it all better. But since this is unlikely, my next question is, how can we reposition ourselves to respond in new ways? How can we use the darkness to our advantage, and how can we use uncertainty as the energy to ignite our success?

Let's start by turning  to face forward. Let's assume that our answers lie ahead, in the direction of where we want to go. What we need now is innovation on a Copernican scale,  ideas that rock our world and change everything. Quantum ideas. They need not be big, but they must be powerful. Let's start with a whopper:

We have everything we need.

And another:

There's enough to go around.

Now, quick, before you get all rational on me, try this. Make a list of all the things that could and would change in your community, beginning now, if everyone believed these statements to be true. Include everything you can think of, regardless of whether it's "practical" or not.

Now make a list of things that you could do personally, however small, to reflect your belief in these statements. How would you behave differently, and how would your behavior benefit not only you, but your community as well? Maybe you'd leave a bigger tip for the waitress at the diner. That would sure make her day. Or share an idea for a joint marketing plan with your fellow store owners.

Last, but not least, make a list of no more than three things you will commit to doing in the next week that reflect these statements. Is that light I see over yonder? Yep, keep going!

"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got."
                                                                  - American Proverb

Seems like awful folksy wisdom for such a big void and such high-tech problems. But think about it. As we turn to face the future, toward uncertainty-and therefore toward possibility-we have so much more to work with. As community development expert, Peter Block, says, we want desperately to take the uncertainty out of the future. But when we take the uncertainty out, all we have is the present projected forward. And none of us wants more of what we've got now; that we know for sure.

I want my dear town to bustle with robust businesses and happy, productive citizens, who welcome brisk  trade to our many shops, galleries and restaurants. I want to contribute to my community in joyful ways knowing that I'm cared for by those around me.

When I turn to the past, I see an old manufacturing town taking one step forward and two steps back. When I face the future I have the choice of what to envision, and a choice of how to participate in creating whatever is necessary to make that vision a reality. It's not magic, and it's not rocket science. It's a matter of being bold enough to imagine the light, and then stepping toward it, one choice at a time.

Red Raspberries, Green Money

I picked four quarts of raspberries in the last two days, from the same few bushes, no less! Wild and tangy-sweet. Bursting  red.

I have no words to describe the sensation of being surrounded by such abundance. On the first day, I picked two quarts and felt blessed. We had raspberries for dessert that night, for breakfast the next day, and many handfuls in between.

My mom suggested that I freeze them, save them for later. But what if there is no later; what if it's only now, just me and those delicious red nipples of joy? Besides, maybe there are more.

So I went out again this morning with another two containers and the thought that I'd be lucky to fill one half way. But another two quarts fell into my hands. And again I stood in the prickly green and red forest thinking how grateful I am: for raspberries, for summer, for everything.

I've been thinking a lot about abundance lately; most of us have. It's a hot topic.  And I'm fascinated by the beliefs I find, in myself and others, about money and scarcity. I know there's a lesson in the raspberry patch, about how abundance is there for the picking if we look for the natural order of things.

There's an excellent article by Woody Tasch in this month's Green Money Journal newsletter called Slow Money, Manure and Prudence. It's about rethinking how we make, use and distribute money, so that the process becomes naturally generative, rather then destructive.

Much of my discomfort around the subject of money has stemmed from the belief that destruction (or abuse, or neglect) has to be part of the equation. Which, I've discovered, is true only if that's the story I tell. There are other stories out there. Enter socially responsible investing and not only for profit business. Tasch has founded Slow Money (a la Slow Food), an organization dedicated to rethinking the process entirely.*

"In these first few decades of the 21st century," he writes, "it is our 'inescapable duty', to use Wendell Berry's words, to change not only our light bulbs, but our myths. And along with them, our concepts of entrepreneurship, investing and philanthropy, which will have to be amended, expanded, and, perhaps, even radically transformed, as part of a new vision of restorative economics."

Just imagine creating, having, spending and giving away wealth in ways that generate life on this planet. Not piddling, scrawny, eek-it-out, it's-so-hard-to-get-funded amounts, but juicy falling-off-the-vine, four-quarts-in-two-days amounts. Raspberries for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

What are we getting out of our old stories about money? Not much, or not much that's good for us anyway. That it's hard, that we have to suffer, that we have to make others suffer in order to be wealthy? I prefer the raspberry story myself.

And here's the thing I forgot to say. On my way to the bushes this morning, a guy walked by me carrying a quart bag of raspberries, and I thought, "Oh no, he's gotten there first! None for me."

Oops! Old thinking...repeat after me, Abby: There's enough for everybody. And sure enough, there was.

*Great reading:

Megatrends 2010: The Rise of Conscious Capitalism by Patricia Aburdene

In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honore