Consuming Thoughts: T

T is for Trust That We Now Sorely Lack. Peter Gabriel: You can blow out a candle but you can’t blow out a fire. Alone, and many of us feel more alone than we care to admit, no matter how brightly we burn we are still a single flame, an isolated candle. I love Ignite Portland, an event where an unpredictable array of individuals assaults, entertains and inspires us with a non-stop onslaught of 5 minute presentations. It’s brilliant. It truly shines. Thank you Raven for making it so. Yet, it is a collection of bright spots, a series of separate flames, a parade of fireflies.

Most of us in our work, often even in our home lives, remain disconnected. Work has demanding deadlines and we sacrifice the human quality of our teamwork to function mechanically. We sacrifice “trust” for “alignment.” I’ve been in a number of meetings where the detente of alignment censors discussion of deeper, later very destructive issues. At home the distractions of PS3, computers, smart phones, cable TV-technologies that are supposed to connect us-actually make us experts at remaining apart.

One of the catalysts for our over-consumptive ways is a lack of connection. We substitute stuff for substantial relationships. The foundation of strong, healthy relationships is trust. The source of Abundance in our lives is trust. Trust in our selves, trust in relationships with others, trust in the power of community, trust in the wisdom of the systems that support and sustain us.

Trust demands an openness, an intermingling of mutual vulnerability. Somatically, energetically it is supported by a strong core of self-awareness and feels and acts a lot like love. Ask people who were part of high-performing teams. The adjectives and descriptions they use to describe their experience could easily describe a good marriage. High-performing teams emerge from deep and enduring trust. Strong communities are sustained through webs of relationships woven with threads of trust. Together, we burn brilliantly, much brighter, than a collection of disconnected  individuals.

Tags: alignment, cable TV, fireflies, healthy relationships, high-performing teams, Ignite Portland, Peter Gabriel, PS3, Raven Zachary, smart phones, trust

Gratitude

It begins with an awareness of breath. My breath, my wife’s breath, rain falling lightly in the fog outside the bedroom window. My son stirs, clambers down from his loft and crawls into our bed. Family, the three of us half-awake, half-asleep, still this early morning.

Memories of Thanksgivings past dance through the fog Douglass Fir tree tops emerge. Family gathering in Ohio. Friends coming down from Tacoma. Friends full, already stuffed in Tokyo. Ah, the gift of Chex mix and bright green moss on the trees.

Grace, our turkey, begins her slow transformation into dinner. Grace, the words and the intent behind the words uttered before our feast, our communion and celebration of Abundance. So much to be thankful for. So much.

My son’s blonde mane appears over his now sleeping mother, followed by, simply, the most beautiful smile. Time to wake and be, fully, part of a day dedicated to Gratitude.

Itadakimasu. We humbly and wholly accept and receive this gift of life, family & community, bountiful harvests, opportunity & prosperity, and the means to give these gifts of Abundance to others. Om Shanti Om. Amen.

Tags: abundance, grace, Gratitude

Consuming Thoughts: S

S means Savings Through Which We All Win. John Lydon; Anger is an energy! Anger is an energy! So is money. It is the water cycling through our economic ecosystems, the electric currency powering the prosperity of our communities. Life is a big ‘ol square dance of energy exchange.

Money is kind of funny because it has value only because we agree that it does. It’s not food, shelter, clothing and certainly not sex. It is a means to an end. What end? In the “West” we tend to focus on personal prosperity. In the “East” there is still often a strong element of familial piety that creates large amounts of savings and distribution within large, extended families. Both models work and both can become highly dysfunctional. Their relative levels of success depend on where we stand in terms of scarcity and abundance.

Scarcity leads to contraction, hoarding, and win-lose competition for what are perceived as limited resources. Abundance demands we expand our sense of “me” to “we” and our sense of family to include community. In a scarcity driven world we save money out of fear and distrust. With an abundance mindset we save money because of its potential to benefit us and the community that sustains us. Scarcity leads us to the false choice of “either/or.” Abundance challenges us to be big enough to hold “both/and.”

To spend money we have to save money. Saving is good. It builds up a reservoir of energy. What we need to consider is, “What are we saving it for?” How can those savings be best used to sustain us and that which sustains us?

Another key consideration is value. Some of us are highly skilled at accumulating money but are terrible musicians and would soon whither in the extremes of a 1st grade classroom. Currently schools throughout the US are significantly underfunded yet scarcity minded, yet professional sports salaries continue to climb. Koyaanisqatsi, koyaanisqatsi.

Collectively we have the talent, resources and means to create communities of abundance. Our biggest obstacle? Our selves. What are we saving it for? What are we waiting for? What can we create-together?

Tags: abundance, bonuses, John Lydon, koyaanisqatsi, savings, scarcity

Consuming Thoughts: Q

Q is For Quiet When the Noise Relents. Michael Stipe: Answer me a question I can’t itemize, I can’t think clear, you look to me reason, it’s not there…Begin the begin. Competing desires, a hundred brands of breakfast cereal, 1000 channels of TV, millions of blogs, websites, billions of people and a gnawing feeling that most of this has little meaning. Noise. We are surrounded by noise and most of that noise is designed to encourage us to shop, spend, consume over and over again. We rarely get or give our selves the gift of being alone, silent, quiet, still. Gretel Ehrlich wrote The Solace of Open Spaces a wonderful meditation on living in the vast silence that surrounds and holds this noise. In “The Body and the Earth” Wendell Berry refers to our moments of communion with quiet as “atonement”-literally “at one-ment”. To achieve this “at-one-ment” is to practice fidelity to deeper commitments like marriage, family, friends & community and our relationship with place-our home. This is a fidelity that can “preserve the possibility of devotion against the distractions of novelty.” It is local, it is living in appreciation of the abundance brought forth from our commitments to our selves, the place we call home, and to each other.

Turn off the TV, gently return your iPhone to it’s charger. Go, sit down and draw and play with your children. Hug your husband or wife like you mean it and, then, find a place. Your place. Sit and be quiet. Begin the begin. At home. At one. Atone.

Tags: atonement, Begin the Begin, Gretel Ehrlich, iphone, Michael Stipe, The Body and the Earth, The Solace of Open Spaces, Wendell Berry

Consuming Thoughts P

P is for Patterns and Being Present. Roger Daltrey: Listening to you, I get the music, gazing at you, I get the heat, following you, I climb the mountain, I get excitement at your feet. In our excitement to buy, adorn and enhance our selves through commerce it would serve us well to be aware of two things. 1) Our selves: What patterns of consumption drive us to buy and what exactly are we buying? Those of us who do the shopping probably have some well-worn trails we traipse. As I say to my son: pay attention, you might just learn something. 2) Our context: What environmental patterns (designed and emergent) drive us to buy what? Michael Pollan’s intriguing treatise, The Botany of Desire on the control plants exert on our development as people and cultures is well worth a read. As is Biomimicry, a beautiful book by Janine Benyus.

Ms. Benyus also gives us this to ponder: life creates the conditions conducive to life. Spend some time with that one, folks. As a consumer, parent, business person, educator, human being are you creating conditions conducive to life? How do you know?

Tags: Biomimicry, Botany of Desire, Janine Benyus, Michael Pollan, Roger Daltrey

Consuming Thoughts O

O is for Observing How We All Live. Happy Rhodes: Every step I take, I am life. I am life. Or, as John Muir wrote: “When we try to pick out anything by itself we find that it is bound fast by a thousand invisible cords that cannot be broken, to everything in the universe.” The Value Web is one very powerful tool for understanding how we inter-connect, inter-depend and inter-relate. Another beautiful process called the Muir Web was developed by Eric Sanderson for the Mannahatta project. If we were to focus on beavers, the two essential questions of the Muir Web are, “What does a beaver need?” and “What needs a beaver?” Both of these tools point us toward understanding how we relate and can sustain that which is around us and how that which is around us is related to and sustains us. Understand this and you will change what and how you consume. Trust me.

Tags: Eric Sanderson, Happy Rhodes, John Muir, Mannahatta, Muir Web, the Value Web

Consuming Thoughts N

N is for Now and That’s All There Is. Morrisey: You say it’s going to happen now-but when exactly do you mean? Buddhism calls rampant consumerism the world of hungry ghosts. Forever wanting, forever hungry we wander around samsara seeking happiness in things. In the Bible, the book of Matthew states: “You cannot serve both God and Mammon.” Mammon is typified as avarice and greed. Again, choosing wealth and stuff as a path to wholeness and contentment. As consumers we are frequently guided by desire and appetite. We want something so we buy it. We hunger so we consume. In this cycle there is temporary, fleeting comfort-instant and brief happiness. In this cycle we are not fully present. We are led by desire. There is no Now, there is a never-ending future, always just out of reach. We grasp at that next thing and, somehow, happiness still eludes us. Now, welcome to Now. Comfort and happiness are here-Now-in You-in God-in the Present. Continuous, constantly unfolding Now. Take a breath. Let it out slow. Check it out-Now.

Tags: Buddhism, hungry ghosts, mammon, Morissey, samsara, the book of Matthew

Consuming Thoughts M

M is for Measurement and What it Reflects. Andy Partridge: Tryin’ to take this all in and I’ve got 1-2-3-4-5 senses working overtime. We measure what matters and what we think matters we measure. Attention breeds intention and intention directs attention. Trying to make sense of it all is like trying to count sand. Want to get a grip on consumption? Start measuring.

Measure waste. How much stuff is going to the landfill? How much of that stuff is plastic? How much are you paying to have someone come and pick up unneeded and unnecessary crap?

Measure your waist. How much of what you consume is ending up around your middle or on your thighs? Is that cost effective, efficient or healthy? What can you do to reduce this accumulation? How will you know you’re having success? And, by the way, what on Earth are you saving it for? The world is getting warmer after all.

Measure your impact. How much of what you spend is benefitting your community? Your city? Local businesses and merchants? How much of that comes back to you? Figure it out. Draw your own Value Web and start connecting the dots.

By focusing on these three simple areas we direct our attention, build intention and create a path for our energy and intelligence to follow. What you learn will change your life.

Consuming Thoughts: JKL

J is for Jewels in Indra’s Jeweled Net. Roger Waters: Come on you raver, you seer of visions, come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine! What’s really cool (and can really suck) about being a living open system enmeshed within living open systems is that the health of the systems around us (political, economic, ecological) are directly reflected within us. Our individual and collective health also affects and influences these systems. Think about neighborhoods. Healthy neighborhoods are generally populated with people who regularly interact with and support each other. People spend more time, money and energy in the neighborhood. Unhealthy neighborhoods are typified by rising or rampant crime, disconnection and fear. People spend more time, money and energy protecting themselves. What’s the cause? We and the systems we create and effect are. If, as consumers and members of communities, we can find a way for more and more of us to shine, all of Indra’s Jeweled Net will radiate with our joy.

K is for Kindness and What it Begets. Jimmy Buffett: Were you born an asshole, or did you work at it your whole life? At a spoken-word performance back in the day, Henry Rollins told a story about living in New York and how it takes just one asshole to touch off a chain reaction of negativity and acrimony throughout the city. Now, turn it around. Well-targeted or even random acts of kindness and compassion can have the same effect. And, just to set the record straight, I’m not talking about some illusory feel-good bliss binge. I’m talking about a simple everyday practice of just being decent to each other, producing and buying that which does no or little harm, and creating opportunities for each of us feel valued and add value as we go about living our lives.

L is for Love that Binds and Connects. Morihei Ueshiba: A good stance and posture reflect a proper state of mind. I have learned more about love getting beat up in the martial arts than in anything else I have done. Love is connection. The deeper the connection, the deeper the love. And that love can be pretty tough. Scarcity, fear, unbridled anger, distrust all arise from negative reactions to changes around us – off balance – insatiable hunger, addiction, desire to consume more and more stuff come from a search for connection. Our capacity for love is bounded by our understanding of our selves. Our ability to love depends on our stance and posture as we face and engage with the world. Being grounded, centered, aligned and aware allows us to connect first with our selves and then with others. Extending love is enabled through practice, discipline. It’s not easy and it’s not free. Just ask the folks at Burgerville. Their mission is “to serve with love.” Realizing that calls for a culture of constant reflection and improvement. But when it works, you get some darn good burgers and some really good shakes.

Tags: Burgerville, Henry Rollins, Indra's Jeweled Net, Jimmy Buffett, Morihei Ueshiba, Roger Waters, to serve with love

Consuming Thoughts: I

I is for Inter-relations and What It All Means: John Lydon: Swimming in the slurry, burning in the heat, wind blown is the weather, I eat what you secrete. Nice thought that-and true. Breathe in, breathe out. You’ve just contributed to global warming. We are butterflies individually and collectively creating chaotic change with each flap of our bright, store bought wings. That means that literally everything we eat, drink, acquire and otherwise consume comes with a complex history of relationships, costs of production often hidden and externalized (The Story of Stuff is a delightfully depressing ode to this process.)

Things stay with us for a brief present (sometimes less than a minute of use)  and then can persist in some degraded form for hundreds of years. Take a look: take 10 minutes and start making a list of all the various relationships in which you became enmeshed through the last bottle of water you consumed. I doubt you’ll uncover them all, but please, don’t let me stop you. Imagine going through this process with everything single thing you buy. Not going to happen, is it?

So, as concerned but time-pressed consumers how can we take control of this complexity? Here’s a high impact start:

1. Buy local. Less complexity, more direct effect through shorter value chains.
2. Practice all 6 R’s: Reduce consumption. Reuse whatever possible. Recycle diligently. Repair what can be fixed. Refuse what you don’t need. Redesign how you live to accomplish the other five.
3. Rethink plastic: It tastes terrible, over 80% of it isn’t actually recycled, a staggering amount of it is unnecessary.
4. Create community: share stuff instead of buying what already exists in the neighborhood. Grow and share food. Share knowledge & experience. Share time.
5. Consider creating smaller families: The effects of over-population are not pleasant. Think famine, increased conflict and suffering, increased pressure on dwindling resources leading to large amounts of general unhappiness.

Yoda: Do or do not. There is no try.

Tags: buy local, chaos theory, Community, Do or do not. There is no try, John Lydon, recycle, reduce, refuse, repair, reuse, The Story of Stuff, Yoda