originally posted http://goodancestor.wordpress.com/2010/02/17/this-moment-of-enlightenment-brought-to-you-by-the-internet/

A friend of mine - a woman I respect greatly for both her wisdom and her insight into the challenges humanity faces in reshaping our way of being with one another as well as with other living things - once told me that one of the places she saw the most hope was how global warming and information technology brought our connectedness to more people's attention.  The hope being that if more of us truly understand how connected we are, the more likely we are to make the necessary changes.

Since I picked up this piece of wisdom and added it to my own worldview - I have noticed that online experiences can be so incredibly powerful in certain combination.  One of the powerful aspects of the internet is the ability to experience multiple sources of information or media so close together.  As someone who spends a great deal of time online for work, and as someone who is interested in how wisdom and understanding are being shared online, I am often the beneficiary of forwarded links or the down stream nuggets that can be found when digging deeper on one.

I am also blessed to have a nice computer set up with a speedy internet connection.  I use two monitors both fairly high resolution.  This means that I can run multiple browsers.  It is not unusual for me to have close to 50 browser windows open from various research paths.  Once in a while a combination of online experiences is so powerful that it stops me in my tracks.  Here is one of them:

Here is a performance by Wyclef Jean at the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize concert.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atzt6n1WhR8]

I watched this a few times being blown away at what spirit was comign through this performance and how taken away this audience was.  The first song alone is captivating and while he is chanting "Tell um we say we dont want no war no more" I was actually out of my seat. The second song Sweetest Girl - a song that has captivated me - seems to be about a beautiful vibrant girl who grows up and is trapped in refugee camps eventually falling into prostitution and the sweet child that was once inspiring had fallen into a "Live for the bill, kill for the bill...where my money at" tortured existence.

Another nice version of the song [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhxsEDyOtzQ&feature=related]

To me this performance is one of those profound moments in history.  A powerful moment where a sitting US President - the first black president in US history, European Nobility, the Nobel peace prize, a Haitian born musician... in a moving performance about war and the loss of the promise of a sweet child and all around it saturated madness of money.

Then while listening to this repeatedly I come across these two links.

Wall Street Journal interactive chart of casualties in Iraq
<a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/IRAQ-CASUALTY-COUNT.html">http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/IRAQ-CASUALTY-COUNT.html</a>

and

Freedom Remembered - a site with bios of every US troop who has lost their life
<a href="http://freedomremembered.com/index.php/capt-daniel-whitten/">http://freedomremembered.com/index.php/capt-daniel-whitten/</a>

Using the WSJ link - I found names and then searched for them on the Freedom Remembered.  When I came to this profile Captain Daniel P. Whitten - who died this month, I felt a deep anguish connected to these online events crystallizing and bringing me into a deep place of compassion.

Not of judgment for the conditions that have led us to this point, whether we should be in Iraq or Afghanistan or not, whether our fixation with monetary value overshadows our value for life, etc.  Compassion.

Upstairs, my young daughter Raine slept. In front of me in my browser was a picture of a young and powerful man who only days earlier had died as a soldier in a foreign land.  One who clearly worked to be upright and to contribute and to give of himself in some of the most challenging situations a person can know.  Being a Persian Gulf Vet, I took some sips of the stuff that Captain Whitten and those on all sides of these current conflicts have been drinking from fire hoses.

Captain Whitten and my Raine - they are both sacred sparks - struggle to be themselves in this challenging world.  Wyclef, the Prince of Norway, Obama, the Sweetest Girl - the soft orange glow of a soul shining more brightly at times and eventually going out.

We have so much work to do.  I have deep gratitude for those who are doing it. Who muster courage at the beginning of the day - whether trying to move a crowd with music, are trying to keep their troops alive for another day while carrying out what must seem to be impossible tasks.  Or the man or woman who pull themselves out of bed tired from the previous days work to do it again, to keep food on the table.  For someone who musters a smile when all seems lost, when the earth shakes and everything comes falling down.

What a gift you honor us all with.

<strong><a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/wyclef?blend=1&amp;ob=4#p/f/0/_TwCWVjCGFw">Hold On</a></strong>

I am overflowing!!!




I am sitting here at my studio - a pastoral industrial studio at Hunters Point - Melody Gardot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Eb651s_o1Q&feature=related playing in the background. I am surrounded by my paintings that are pouring out of me every time I pick up a brush. I am even grateful that they are so different than anything else I have ever painted - they are in the abstract expressionist tradition (think JAckson Pollock with swirls and dashes instead of drips http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_expressionism) not that I am saying I am Jackson Pollack.

sweet gratitude for time with my little one. this weekend we made dehydrated apples (I cut them and she laid them on the trays) from our apple trees out front (she picked the apples with Nana). Raine and I also made some zucchini pancakes (I did the slicing and measuring and she did the mixing).

Last week I brought her with me to my studio and had the first quality studio day with her I have been hoping for so long to have. Where I am painting and she is painting and we are both lost in that space - every once in a while talking or interacting. It was awesome. At a certain point I looked up and saw her watching me and she said "I like your painting papa". I almost started crying. It was so sweet.

There is some sweet sorrow in this hunters point studio now - knowing I will be leaving it. Knowing it was a great place of healing for me and a place of quiet reflection. I know for most of my community it will not have existed as few have seen it. It reminds me of a place I was stranded in the Saudi Arabian desert - a place where I found so much of myself and that no one has seen but me.

I am grateful that after years of checking on and off over the internet for an old army buddy I was in desert storm with - I finally found him. Turns out his wife bugged him to try facebook and he was just about to dump it thinking it was a waste of time. he is the guy who i spent the most time with over there and who kept me sane if that is what you could call it :) He has a little one about Raine's age - tonight he is heading out on a night drive from Denver (he is a trucker) and is going to give me a ring from the road.

For my wonderful mother in law - who at 70 faces change with courage and love for family and with curiosity, hope and pride for her kids.

For a wife who even after 14 years of marriage still delights my heart, still makes me see how much stronger a person can get each year, keeps me keep seeking a better version of myself to somehow match the love she has for me.

I am grateful for some new fun tunes:

Thank you for making simple troubles beautiful and important ladies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZKFoMq3GaA&feature=channel

Look at this young fellow - I am reminded of someone singing an old spiritual - he seems carried far away.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvrHfiRq8wg&feature=related

For picking up something old and making it new - a banjo, old cool, old sexy, a fiddle, a carnival, and yes tattooed ladies, places on the road in songs seeming more familiar than they should
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SUFfQ3tGhk&feature=related

One more - 'cuz we need to pick it up for our friends- need to share the load - and we need to like it and feel like "i got it buddy - put the load right on me - i got it baby" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXf-SuBbJa0&feature=related


Grateful for rainstorms, grateful for fresh organic grapes, fresh water, that feeling you get when you know you are moving somewhere new and you have the window open and you feel free and you breath deep like your lungs could take in your whole life of possibilities, like you're young and unafraid and filled with - I dare ya!

Peace and Good Things,

Andrei

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. - Albert Einstein

I am grateful for:

A trip during the day to hunters point artist colony http://www.thepointart.com/ which I believe is under some sort of duress due to some significant public works projects going on.  I saw an ad on craigslist for a space for real cheap.  What a dream to have a studio to work in and call my own during this time of transition.  I was grateful that Amy took a ride with me over there.  It felt like an adventure.  Rough, tumble, dreamy, creative, a little scary over there too but that felt good too.

The abundance of plants I am bringing home form the office and filling my home office with.  More than ever I have a taste for life - I want to be held by the Osa again... dream  dream  dream...

Creation and creation.

Sorrow so that I would better meet and honor joy.

The dust that good book shelves own, and collect for themselves like dried flower.

Watching Raine sitting on the kitchen floor pulling out shittake mushrooms one by one and taking bites out of them declaring whether they were good or not before moving onto the next one.  Then cooking the mushrooms with chipolini onions, olive oil, sea salt and a tiny bit of Worcestershire sauce - we cooked them until there was a layer of carmelized mushroom and onion film on the bottom.  They were sweet and savory.  I sat Raine on the countertop with her knees at my belly and we ate the mushrooms warm and by hand with some toast and cheddar cheese. We drank down some nice water.  We talked about how the mushrooms were "nice and squishy".

Rocking in the rocking chair I repaired this weekend to put Raine to sleep tonight, looking across the bedroom and out the window to see the neighbors maple tree blowing in the breeze.

Hugs and kisses, snuggles, pats, the word "Papa", being a friend, coffee, moss, ambient music at twilight, water, brugmantia blooms at night, an old apple tree.

Gratitude for....

Fog and sun so close along a morning timeline they seem lovers - ahhhh San Francisco!

The Wire - what can I say? I love that show - Balmer and real pOleese.

A.J. Roach - twang, country mountain - music that is almost sad unless you picture sitting on a mountain cabin front porch in a rocker seeing the world from a storytellers eyes. Everything in the context of everything else.
http://www.roachmusic.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuMPecU6RFg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjKVGnmJD7k&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpdhDu15bfM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApojsIljgQY

Fiddle

Little kids running

Light breezes

Memories of a walk in a thunderstorm in the Blue Ridge Mountains with an old friend and his daughter. He taught to be excited when the thunder clapped. There was a meadow running along the side of the road we walked along. There was a white washed old baptist church with someone practicing a song for Sunday.

The smell of wet ground.

That life keeps giving me lesson after lesson of how happiness, peace, stability.... and all the rest of those yummy feelings and ideas and states.... these do not exist outside of oneself. They live inside. The one exception is when they are experienced through the love with another or in community. These are shared inward states. The desperate need for others to provide us these things has been at the center of so much heartache and disappointment. Lately with the challenges at work, I have seen people become so upset because the illusion that others can provide this for them. It is another case for taking complete responsibility for ourselves.

Early jazz and ragtime
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugkCH8f7UJw&videos=xjHPptSSYCA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PpKXx3Varg&feature=PlayList&p=DBC4A279290E8B03&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=51

Louis and Billie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWtUzdI5hlE&videos=xjHPptSSYCA
Loius - what a wonderful world
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnRqYMTpXHc&videos=xjHPptSSYCA

I am grateful for:

Blue Plate restaurant in SF - yummy Americana Comfort food with local and organic sensibilities.  Mmmmmmmmm.  Also they are serving Four Barrel espresso, and the macchiato I had was BEATNIK PIRATE GOOD.  Like you knew it was going to be good because people talk about it all the time, and then you have it and you are like - ok this isn't just water cooler blabberfest good.  It is write a hand letter to an old cafe buddy good - put a really cool stamp honoring a dead artist or poet on it good and maybe even get some sealing wax with a skull and cross bones seal good.  Damn fine soul joe.

I am thankful for hearing some good news about a big project that might be coming our way.

I am thankful that for this time that above all other things has helped me to reduce the amount of expectations and attachments I have.  Being right about the way something should be or being clear about what you want something to be - these are fantastic abstract planning modalities.  But they are not the map to live life by.  Looking outside of one's self for clarity, certainty, comfort, peace, happiness....  this is like chasing clouds in a dream and expecting to wake with from it having built a castle.  The fortress is inside - its flags and banners, its sturdiness, great halls and merry feasts, its meditation chambers for peace, its jesters for laughter.  Inside I might find these and stand beside others who have done similarly - this is the way to live.

I am thankful for a lovely mother's day weekend and that sherry had a wonderful time.  I really wanted her to have a good weekend to say thanks for all she is doing for our family and all she is doing as a mother to Raine.

I am grateful for my little Raine - I love her and like her so much.  I am proud to be her papa.  I thank her regularly for coming to us and as she grows I want to always tell her how grateful I am that she found her way to us, as if it were her spiritual choice.  I dont know if this is a cosmological emperical truth, some would say yes, but I love the metaphor of the gift inherant in being chosen by this wonderful soul.  It is an honor and helps me understand that gratitude is not the end of a connection - not the triumphant zenith - that place belongs to devotion.  Devotion to what you are blessed enough with to notice and be grateful for.  It is the act of building a temple at the top of the mountain, or at the very least it is the act of packing out your own trash.

peace and good things,

Andrei

Another place at night
streets that move differntly
Morocco or Spain or Jerusalem or a place made of their stones
gardens
dust
sand
sweat
sweet tea
feet make a slow slow sound
eyes that look at you longer
a cart and a far off small bell
someone being called
a prayer
a whisper
a candle in a light warm breeze
copper
hands of two colors

All this drifts to

humid
tall windows and linen
Spanish moss
ironwork
balconies and beeds
watermellon
chicory
jazz
working hands
perfume and rainfall
voodoo
mustache
carnival.

I am grateful for:

carnival energy and colors.  i dont know why they keep coming into my life in little dribs and drabs - or maybe i am just noticing this cultural and aesthetic pallette in a way i never have before.  it makes me want to grow outrageous facial hair, wear baggy clothes and suspenders in and interesting hats.  it makes me want to get my freak on.

moss - i am grateful for the moss in all the cracks and corners and hope we will get a rain soon again to keep it vibrant for a little longer before spring turns to summer.

bodies - the bodies of SFians when the sun starts coming out - wow what beautiful and interesting women emerge from their sweaters and knee length boots - skin, flowery perfume, bodies on park grass.

a hard boiled egg i had this morning with my coffee - free range, organic, happy chickens - yummy brown speckles egg shelled brright white and bright yellow - the bright yello of the yoke is the same color as chicks isnt it?

watching an old episode of the Sopranos last night - fagetaboutit!!! vafangoo  gabagooooooo

the red and black carpet of my office - btw - you guys are always welcome to stop by and say hi.

plants - i think they will be my salvation

collected things that beg to be arranged.

love

spider webs

an old street flattened can I kicked the way it seemed to hover and then lift off the ground before it disappeared under a car.

the beautiful blue eyes of a woman at the cafe

brian's (piccino head barista) smile and the way i can feel my jokes lifting his spirit.

down tempo techno dub - whatever that it - just felt like being cool and liking something ravish

My precious little Raine,

I can hardly begin this letter without tears coming to my eyes.  I could say the things that a father would say in a letter to his little girl – like you are the most perfect little soul I have ever met.  Your very smile, your sweet voice, your hugs and kisses are like the most brilliant lights inside of me, and they remind me of my finer nature, the nobler home my spirit is born from and for.  I could fill a book with these things and no doubt will fill your ears with them as you grow and I grow with you in the years to come.

Instead in this birthday letter, I want to share my wishes for you and also what I have seen of you up to this second year of your birth.

I have seen you from very early on filled with physical strength, stamina and health.  You have been in love with climbing since you first figured it out, you have been using your fingers and hands so articulately from early on.  I have been so impressed with who you are as a physical being.

I have seen your beauty transform the most stoic of faces.  You are so beautiful – your fine skin and sweet face and your kind and gentle eyes.  I feel like when you look at people you see how beautiful they are.  I hope you can always share your beauty and also remain open to others’.  I think this exchange I have seen between you and people is remarkable and transformative.

Your intelligence is remarkable to all of us who see it.  I said to someone the other day, that I felt certain that you would be so much smarter than I am.  After saying it, I was so happy at the idea that someday you would come to me with ideas that were stimulating and new and I would learn from you about the world.  Until then, I will do what I can to stimulate your mind and show you the world I have seen.

You love others so well already.  I love how affectionate and kind you are to other people and animals.  You have a spirit that is connected to others.  Even at this young age you are talking about how you feel about people.  You are telling us that you are “happy – sad same time” when we leave your little friends Zoe or Violet.  I love that already your love for others is shaping your emotional landscape.  I look forward to that rich world unfolding along your path.  I know you will feel deeply and that sometimes that will be hard, but I know you will be able to use that deep emotional texture to inform your way of being and your creativity.

I see it.  I see the fire of a creator in you.  I assign no expectation to that, only that I see in you an exchange with the world that is sometimes labeled as “creative” or “artistic”.  I hope that this remains in you, because I have found even in my half efforts of expression that there is such richness in this exchange with the world.  I will do my best to share what little I know about this spirit, should it be something that you continue to embrace.

My wishes for you my daughter…

I wish above all that you have deep love in any shape it may come in.  Love is the thing that makes us who we are.  It shapes us more than any other experience – one who is well loved and who loves well is a center that is crowded around and that warms the world.  It is the sun of the human experience.  Above all else, I will always work to give you love and to help you notice it when it arrives in your life.  If I were to design a curriculum for your life it would be grounded in love and through love we would look at all things.

I believe that seed of love is a connection with life itself, and when we love we see more fully the impact we have on the life around us.  When we love, we honor all living things.  When we see a life through love, we see it connected to all other living things.  When we love ourselves we know the worth of all living things.  When we know that worth, we know right action.

I wish for you a value system rooted in life, and that you grow into a woman who has a clarity that makes right action simple, even when it is not easy.

I will do my best to share my blundering efforts to be upright and good, and I will see my life as an expression of elevating your own moral character.

I wish for you a life filled with rich experience, and that whether you chose to wander wide and far or to search deep inside yourself, that you find the vastness of your life experience to be a source of great content.  Like the ecosystem we are a part of, the stuff of life composts and nurtures our life with cyclical processes that create, destroy and heal. I wish for you an abundance of time and energy to touch and relate to these cycles and feel them as much a guide as an idea.

My sweet baby woman – I love you so much.  When all other reasons fall away you are my best reminder for why I press on.  That life is sacred.  My life.  Your life.  All life.  That I must press on as I am called to honor that sanctity.  Happy birthday Raine.

Peace, Love and Good Things,

Papa

from my buddy JLJ

Paying attention
Due to the economic recession, I have been spending a lot of time on the phone with clients and colleagues in an attempt to both secure businesses for my team as well as to touch base with people and gain a better understanding for how my network is responding to the tough times at hand.

I see several trends in my discussions with people and felt compelled to share them.  I also found certain trends emerging in my own responses to them and in what sorts of deeper considerations these responses prompted.

The thing I am noticing is of course that people are scared, worried and often in a bit of paralysis.  All around them, friends, family and colleagues are loosing their jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. Department of Labor reported in January that “Nonfarm payroll employment fell sharply in January (-598,000) and the unemployment rate rose from 7.2 to 7.6 percent.  Payroll employment has declined by 3.6 million since the start of the recession in December 2007; about one-half of this decline occurred in the past 3 months.  In January, job losses were large and widespread across nearly all major industry sectors.” Full report - http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

A colleague at a major financial services corporation told me the other day that in a recent news feed he received, tabloid style headlines about his corporation were sandwiched between a story about Britney Spears drinking a beer while holding her kid and some Hollywood affair.  A fixation with this current economic situation “originating” in the financial services and real estate sectors has actually reached tabloid depths.

For me I say we must look deeper.  We must look at the underlying system that has driven not only financial service corporations but all sectors to behave in ways that are not sustainable.  Now I know coming form me you are thinking I am talking about sustainability in terms of social justice and ecological sustainability – but I am also talking about an economic model that is not sustainable.

There has been a fixation in our economic system that has focused on financial gain above all other values.  Often this financial gain is only valued if it can be achieved in the short term.  And make no mistake about it – if you have a 401K or investments in stock or real estate you have been involved in this system.  If you have purchased any bargain products you are part of it too.  In fact if you have purchased anything that has a price that does not actually reflect its true cost to the economy, environment and your fellow human beings – you are a part of it. 

Sounds out of control doesn’t it?  It is. 

It is out of control because it is outside the control of our best systems of values.  In fact at a certain point in human history – valuing money above all else was considered greed – a sin.  Today it constitutes the true center of value of most corporations and the oversimplified values we monitor by watching stock prices or quarterly earnings.

In the last few centuries there have been movements within society that ran in parallel to this overly simplistic and shortsighted system of value.  Some of them existed outside of the corporations like unions or consumer advocacy groups.  Some existed inside corporations – movements to institute fair labor practices and see people as the most important capital inside a company or movements to behave ecologically responsible.

Some corporations have actually begun to create value systems that are closer to what it means to live responsibly – the truly progressive have embraced systems thinking understanding the interconnectedness of living systems that have nurtured life on this planet since it began and our impacts inside of these systems. 

Systems thinking discovers that some of the value systems we were taught in kindergarten or the lessons we learned in our respective churches, mosques, temples, synagogues, etc.  are actually closer to what we need to avoid jail time, hurting people’s feelings, destroying ecosystems and yes avoiding economic recessions.  Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. Take responsibility for your actions.  Do not lie.  Do not steal. Do not kill. 

We are all a part of a whole.  No one is separate.  There is only us.  But don’t take it from just me.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

We are all connected to everyone and everything in the universe. Therefore, everything one does as an individual affects the whole. All thoughts, words, images, prayers, blessings, and deeds are listened to by all that is.
Serge Kahili King

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.
John Muir

We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.
Herman Melville


Responsibility
So if we accept this, that we are all connected and that this connectedness is discovered in the day to day reality of our current economic situation, we suddenly see the awesomeness of our individual and collective responsibility. 

The other day in reflecting on the current situation I had the following thought – In a time of fear and doubt showing up happy is an act of courage.  Today I had a related thought.  In a culture where it is so easy to have no idea what impact our choices have on others, a thoughtful purchase is a revolutionary act of responsibility.

Taken as a whole the task before us, to remake a value system in the image of our higher values and passions, seems impossible.  It seems the effort better left to a god, a hero or a president.  But this does not erase the necessity of the task.  Also make no mistake about it the effort will be ten times as difficult for the next generation if left to them entirely.

In fact, my thoughts above focused me on the simple acts – not as a shoulder shrugging “what can I do except for this little thing – ah shucks” cop out, but because every act, word, passion, idea is contagious.  Walking into a room of frightened people bravely happy and charged to face the challenges is contagious.  Walking in and saying it cannot be done is contagious also.

Like times in our lives where the difficult or impossible presented itself, this moment presents itself as a choice.  Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, once said (paraphrased) that the only true freedom we have is in how we respond to what happens to us. 

Each day, every moment and situation, is a choice to behave responsibly.  To look deeply into a situation and down the avenues of cause and effect, to beg patience of those around us as we do, and make our best decision.  A decision grounded in our better and nobler understanding of right and wrong, connectedness and conscience.

We encounter few moments in life where so many of us are sharing the same experience and where our connection to each other is so obvious.  This economic situation alerts us to the importance of our personal responsibility and it provides us with an opportunity to deepen discussions that once seemed simple by measuring increased revenue or decreased cost and calculating shareholder value.

In my humble estimation, this is a moment to transform our lives, our corporations and our system through acts of daily responsibility.  We must daily interject a multidimensional value system that will give our society a better chance at sustaining itself. 

We must search models of collaboration and incorporation and community where coming together in more varied ways to move through challenges extends our calculations of success beyond counting dollars, Yen or Euros.  It is certain that these too must be considered, but at what cost and in what company I believe will sculpt and stamp the impression into the clay that is the future. 


We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
George Bernard Shaw

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Albert Einstein

I believe that to meet the challenges of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for oneself, one's own family or nation, but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace.
H. H. the Dalai Lama:


Gratitude
I have been blessed to have a close friend who brought the word “gratitude” into focus as a practice or form of active prayer in my life.  None too soon, with all the challenges that it seems life has thrown our way. 

I have been involved in a regular practice of exchanging gratitude lists through email with “gratitude partners” and the practice of seeing another person’s gratitude has increased my own.  It has taught me that gratitude is indeed contagious and feeds the courage to behave responsibly and productively.

In fact I think an increased and fully focused sense of gratitude for the many blessings in my life has done more to prepare me for the tough days associated with these times than anything else except perhaps love.

Part of what I believe we must collectively be grateful for is this moment.  We have a chance to refocus the human experiment – focus on bettering ourselves, our communities and behaving as stewards for the many resources and natural wonderment around us. 

Now more than ever we must focus on our connections to family, friends, community, planet.  We must focus our attention and appreciation not on luxuries or fantasies of fame and fortune but on the actions and items that nurture and cradle life.  Take note of the lives around you, that you move through each day and celebrate your connection to them.

Look there a woman who just lost her job, a man who sees retirement fading into the distance, a friend who lost their house – all these lives are likely still filled with blessings.  Look these people in the eye, connect with them, smile – give your gratitude as a gift to remind them they are not alone.  They are connected.  There is gratitude for something in their life, and that seeing it and spending just a few moments with it is the seed that will grow to make the difference in these times.

When I have shared just a glimpse of this attitude with others – even the most formal of business connections, I am repeatedly surprised by how people are doing this already.  People are inviting friends over, spending more time with family, finding themselves appreciating simple moments, enjoying cooking meals together rather.  One person said they hadn’t ever remembered being grateful for the feeling of laughter before.

I would encourage you to touch base with your own sense of gratitude – not as a duty or an obligation or something to add to your list, but as a person who is thirsty takes up a cup of spring water. 

Gratitude will help us bridge the frightening chasm between a society now distressed and exhausted by decades of consumerism and a global community that understand how to service and care for its own needs responsibly, compassionately and with deep appreciation.

I am certain that there will be many moments in the days ahead when by keeping my own gratitude on the tip of my lips I will inspire others.  I am equally as certain that I will fall upon days where I will need to hear about the sweetness of someone’s love for their child, the gratitude for a neighborly act or for the goodness of a work community that faced tough times together.


Whoever is happy will make others happy, too.
Mark Twain

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.
Cicero

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.
Albert Schweitzer

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Marianne Williamson


Revolution is a distraction
There have been times in the past when I sat in contemplation of the challenges in our society and wished to be a part of a revolution.  Having lived and worked in our economic system for many years now, I see many of its faults and virtues more clearly.  I see not a broken system but one that is still evolving.

I see in my fellow humans and myself the capacity to self govern, self motivate and understand the ramifications of our actions and live in a society that someday (most likely not in my own life) will know harmony.  When I go to work and shape my work community, I remind myself that freedom-loving people need to be trusted.  Not just with the easy stuff but the hard stuff too.  Freedom and trust are as foundational to positive change as they are to innovation. 

By tapping into our sense of personal responsibility and gratitude, we can take note of the things that need changing around us.  I for one have already learned a lesson about what I believe a work community needs to provide for itself.  I think we are often lost at the paycheck and benefits level and because it becomes more complicated, less cut and dried, less common denominator, we sell ourselves short by remaining focused on simply building a business community that increases these.

At the next level there is the creation of a community that can make change together.  An assembly of skills and energy that can make things happen.  The experience of pointing these skills and energies at problems that we are facing becomes an interesting road to examine.  Doing well by doing good -  a new business objective.

Creating a transparent operating environment where people can see the road ahead, and leaders help everyone understand it and the risks and rewards and opportunities to the community and to them as individuals.  This act provides us in these uncertain times with the certainties that match the strength of the community and not just on the strength of its shareholder value.

At the end of the day, as a business owner or leader, I may never become wealthy, but I may enjoy the rewards of a community that understands how to support one another and how to touch the lives around them meaningfully and positively.   The prospect of this seems both more real and more reassuring.

I look less for a revolution and more for an opportunity.  I look less for and end of one thing than the evolution of it.  I set aside judgment and pick up a sense that we can do this.  A choice must be made now, we can see ourselves as worn down, tired, scared or we can see ourselves as enduring, pressing forward with what energy we have and courageous for taking the next step.

Long ago I heard a quote form Teilhard de Chardin (paraphrased) The greatest fear is to see the empty space before us that is the future.  The greatest courage is the fill it with the best of who we are.

Peace and Good Things,

Andrei Hedstrom