The insightful and socially conscious civic entrepreneur Adele DiMarco Kious cooks up valuable vision for all in a recipe for prosperity posted to her Sicilian Soulfood blog - she surfaces a concept I hold dear, which is the value of developing a knowing and loving community. More than ever in our history, the American psyche is rooted in fear, but we have nothing to fear but living in fear itself. The recent natural disaster in South East Asia shows man is not in control of destiny.
As we've seen, 100,000s of people can be lost and forgotten in one wave of mother nature's hand. An earthquake in NEO may kill even more people than did the recent tsunami on the other side of our world, and we will need all the world's love and charity to rebuild here. We are not in control of our lives, but we are not alone in living. While America is an insignificant factor in the order of the universe, and we are each uniquely irrelevant in time, working as a loving global community, all who know and love others may solve seemingly insurmountable problems for great short-term good... global collaboration to aid SE Asia is now saving millions of lives. A lesson to be learned from the latest natural disaster is that living in fear is pointless - Earth is not subject to human design - but people have a unique opportunity to solve problems in other people's lives on earth through love, teamwork and pooling and sharing our innate, individual goodness and ingenuity - the more open collaboration the better. Because people are collaborating with ingenious technology today , millions of lives will be saved. More ingenious collaboration in the future will save more lives. The better we do that, as individuals and humanity, the better for each individual, earth, and all on the planet hereinafter.
Collaboration Creates Prosperity
I took the title of today's entry from a chapter title in the book "The
Soul of Money; Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life" by
Lynne Twist. The book hit me on so many levels. The strongest of which
is that we are a world....the haves, the have nots and the have
mores.....plaugued with the "not enough" thinking. "I don't have enough
time", "We don't have enough money", "I didn't get enough sleep",
"There aren't enough people who care," etc. This is scarcity thinking.
Lynne's encourages a shift to sufficiency thinking.
Lynne mentions that collaboration can lead us to and ground us in sufficiency.
"There
are no haves and have-nots. We are all haves and our assets are
diverse. In the alchemy of collaboration, we become equal partners; we
create wholeness and sufficiency for everyone."
I agree with
Lynne that collaboration and reciprocity are natural. Yet, in a world
we inhabit, competition and the fear of scarcity often block us from
seeing these ways of being with each other. When we are rooted in FEAR,
our thinking becomes your OR me. Reciprocity and collaboration don't
fit. When we are rooted in LOVE, thoughts of you AND me are possible
and collaboration, partnership, sharing and reciprocity become our way
of being.
Collaboration is the creative edge our planet is
exploring. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes forgiveness. It
takes personal transformation. And, it takes a new understanding of the
four letter word we use lightly, infrequently and conditionally;
l-o-v-e.
From Adele's Sicilian Soulfood blog