Gift giving is awesome.
Business is stupid.
Gift giving is awesome.
Business confines us to a repetitious relationship where we repeat an action ad infinitum… over and over - you are the consumer. I am the business.
Next.
Next.
Next.
This relationship anonymizes us and separates us.
Who knows why? To create value? To maximize shareholder return?
I guess.
But that all gets dry and impersonal and leads to the diminishment of the human essence - the creative spark in all of us that loves to light up and stay lit with and around others through moments of pure presence/expression/joy!
The value of a gift in contrast to the finite nature of a transaction, is unconditional. An act of creation, thoughtfulness, generosity. A unique expression of a relationship. A once in a lifetime experience.
Yes.
An artefact of the moment of total presence.
That is what I want to be a part of.
Apparently there’s this legacy technology, called money, which is quite useful to get things we need and keep track of who has created what value relatively efficiently... but in a zero marginal cost society, it seems that money is propped up because we don’t know how to operate without it.
A pair of shoes used to take a cobbler a whole day to make. That cobbler and their family’s cost of living for that day had to be covered by the cost of that pair of shoes, in addition to the value of the leather and thread and nails that went into making them. They traded the product of that work for a couple of coins given to someone by a king, for spending time or energy doing something useful to the king, because the king was in a way indebted to that person for their service.
The cobbler took the coins for the shoes because the cobbler could use the coins to pay the king his debt for protecting the cobbler with the armies and police forces he employed… or the cobbler could trade those coins with other product and service providers by the same logic...
Now, a shoe factory spits out a pair of shoes every few minutes (or less) - https://www.sneakerfactory.net/2017/09/shoe-production-timing/.
…
What am I doing right now?
Writing.
Why?
It’s a song.
A song to delight and regenerate and create.
Everything that we do can do these things: delight and regenerate and create.
The whole world desires to be lit up.
To be healed and cared for.
To come to learn that every need can be met. Every want can be satisfied if there’s a deep communication and a mutual consent between partners and a joyful exchange of value.
MMMMMMMMMMMM
That is where the magic lies.
Building the infinite game.
Quitting the finite game - which says there is only so much of so much and I lose if you win.
That game sucks.
I quit it!
Come, quit it with me.
Ask yourself, what can we do to expand the capacity of the world we are in to develop and reward broad minded gift givers?
I’d love to hear your answers to this question.
Perhaps exchanging cash is a helpful tool in the effort of liberation.
Those who create and share and are unafraid to ask the reward for their work, have the cash to reward others who create and share, and that is how we all lift up.
But beware - it is easy to mistake the means for the end and pursue the cash instead of the infinite Gift.
Creating.
Sharing.
Sustaining.
Regenerating.
Delighting.
That is the abundance of this reality.
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News from the week:
The Good
- Treasure Hunt - Mead Club Members get 5 spots, non members have 3 left. Email me if interested.
- Guided Mead Tastings on Zoom with Frank - if you’re a mead club member you get one as a benefit of being in the club [join the club] and then Email me and we’ll set up a 30 minute window to do a tasting covering the Six S Method of Mead Appreciation™ .
If you’re not a mead club member - you should be [link] - but if you want to enter for a chance to win a tasting, purchase something from us in the next 30 days and email me back with your receipt and let me know… I’ll come up with a fair, generous, non-biased way of choosing which entrants get a guided tasting for two to four friends.
- Mead and Magic Weekend with Benjamin Pixie and Frank Rivers Golbeck - October 9th to October 11th at Skalitude in Washington State - Stay Tuned for more details, but if you’re interested, email me!
The Bad
- Fires. I am too optimistic to say that my hopes are feeling trodden upon, but dang… these aren’t good.
Politics - bah! What if, instead of the divide and stupify political reality we are experiencing, we had an “80 Percent Party” that agreed on five major deliverables:
1. A Safe Place to Live for 95/100 people. 2. Quality, Accessible Education for 95/100 people.
3. Quality Accessible Food for 95/100 people.
4. Quality, Accessible Health Care for 95/100 people.
5. Fair Reward for Fair Work for 95/100 people.
For the 5/100 that aren’t served there can be case workers and non-profits to figure out what is in the way of the delivery of these essential elements of a high quality life.
The definition of quality and accessible can shift but if people have a serious grievance, and their political representatives don’t get it resolved, that is grounds for them to be voted out, or maybe even unable to run for reelection in their district.
The Hopeful
- We are working on drafting a regenerative honey certification and verification standard. This is an ambitious undertaking but we are excited about making it happen. Also, there are five other projects in the works, in addition to “business as usual” that make us excited to show up at work and make things happen. We are looking forward to sharing them with you when we are ready.
Thank you for being here, we couldn’t do this without you.
Cheers!
Frank