It's NOT About the Economy

It is about living - The quality of it

As determined and powered by our creation

Fueled by

• Acquisition – maintenance – expansion
• Fear – survival - insufficiency
• Or by sustenance, pace and peacefulness

This time of economic shut down has birthed new realities

There are many who cannot survive without constant work at low pay to maintain minimum standards of the ability to live safely with basic needs met

There are many who have not needed to hop on the nearest airplane and go off to a business gathering to make more stuff or to a vacation place to relax and get away from it all

Staying home is not a bad place

Spending a lot of time with your family is not a bad thing

Not having the basics to stay home and be well with your family is not a good thing

Being well is everything

How shall we re-purpose our economy – can we re-purpose it into meaningful work with meaningful income for the support of living in a place of health and sufficiency for everyone? What might this take?

Perhaps a realignment of thinking in terms of the belief system that says if I have less it will not be enough and if you have enough I will have less because there is not enough for all. Understanding the economic thinking behind our work-based society that must continually escalate to provide more and more and more to stave off having less is critical to changing the balance of work and living. Changing the balance of work and living is essential to our health and well-being.

Economy is not about work. It is about creating the ability to live. Living is not about being in constant physical need and it is not about being in a constant state of feeling that one needs more more. Both are fear-based systems.

Perhaps during this time of shut down some of us have learned to live a little more simply. 

To spend a little less money going after things and a little more time with ourselves and our loved ones. Perhaps we can be quite content with what we have. Perhaps we can live a little more simply and still be happy.

Perhaps we have realized through this time of shut down that no matter what we have tried to do all our lives it has not been enough to bring us security and sufficiency. We cannot create sufficiency for ourselves and our families. This needs and calls for change.

Perhaps we have learned during this time to help our neighbors. To notice need locally around us and take care of it rather than rushing off to work and letting an agency do the work of caring for those in need around us.  

Maybe we are simplifying and localizing just a bit, and maybe, as the “economy” re-opens, we will bring some altered values with us to the workplace – seeing and realizing it as the means to and end of living more simply and helping others more personally, rather than as a personal statement of success, a way to stave off some ill-defined value of not having enough, and all the trimmings that can go with our actioning on that value in our lives. Maybe we have become more aware of the escalating state of working harder for more and more of whatever means success to us with less real living.

Maybe we are going back to work with a new understanding and a raised self-appreciation that will not stand for inequitable and unlivable wages and an unhealthy lifestyle.

This time of shutdown has been a time to experience new values and ponder that effect in our lives going forward. Yes, business will not be as usual. There will be a new normal. But let us look at that new normal from the place of altered values as well as from the place of altered operations. The eruption of awareness around racism and injustice of this current time is not a coincidence. It is an uncovering of the values that are not working in our society – and the economic as well as social impact of these values on populations that are marginalized for the purpose of creating abundance for other segments of our population.

This is an opportunity to re-purpose rather than re-open the economy. Re-envisioning the values that underscore our work and life to create a more equitable society that allows abundance to flow to all its members in good measure – less for some, more for others. 

Can we do it? Can you do it? Can I do it?

What would that look like and how can we do it together?