What might happen if we took the time to appreciate the beauty of nature on a regular basis? Might we be investing time and resources differently? Might we feel we're getting a better return?
An illusion has overtaken us, the illusion that because the money belt has been tightened, we have no resources to invest in creating a better future!
How silly! Here we are, populating the most abundant civilization ever, and all we can think about is what we don’t have: that once flush IRA, that fat-cat portfolio, the ready means to afford upkeep on that second or third home, that steady job (that was driving most of us crazy). Why is that? Why is it so easy for us to focus on what isn’t working? Even when it wasn’t really ever working to our satisfaction?
We have come to equate happiness with affluence, which we narrowly define as having robust financial means. We have completely forgotten the true definitions of the word affluence, which are flow, movement. We make affluence mean the flow of only one thing, money. But it is also the flow of ideas, the movement of people, and of human resources like intelligence and meaningful, passion-based work. Why have we forgotten this? Because for decades, prompted by perfectly produced pop culture, we have been looking to financial affluence to sate us and solve all of our problems. And in the end, the flow of money simply doesn’t run deep enough or wide enough to water our roots of authentic satisfaction.
Now, for the first time in decades, we are beginning to mine resources that have been buried deep in our psyches, resources that have proven, time and again over the ages to be the most potent agents for creating true human satisfaction. With the loss of jobs, many of us have the resource of time on our hands. How are we investing that time? With a reduction in buying power, we are remembering the resource of individual creativity. Where are we investing that creativity? Practicing the art of cooking our own food? Designing our own clothes? With fewer diversions at our fingertips, we have the resource of attention to invest. Where are we investing that attention?
Maybe, the most powerful place to invest resources now is in learning about our true selves, reclaiming our individual creative genius so that we can innovate satisfaction in our world from the inside-out. What if we dared to focus time and attention to reclaim that bright individual spark of uniqueness that lives in each of us? What if we nurtured it as our most precious resource? What if we dared to flow into who we really are and share that affluence with the world?
