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In other words, when someone asks you what you ‘do’, do you attach a label? For example, you might answer:
- “I’m a doctor.”
- “I’m a lawyer.”
- “I’m a contractor.”
- “I’m an engineer.”
- “I’m a trash man.”
- etc.
Yet, none of these labels do any justice to defining you, as a person. You are so much more. In fact, labels are likely a distraction from helping others understand you, with very few exceptions. In most cases, people work on a job or have a career to provide for their families, which means they take the best opportunity – i.e. best paying job – that aligns with their morals and values enough to say yes and work at least 1/3rd of their lives away from there.
Can you imagine your life without modern society? What would you be doing? How would you spend your time? What do you think your body and mind are built to do, naturally?
For example, if you lived in a village with all your best friends and family, what role might you have? Would you be a laborer, an artist, a nurturer, or a visionary that plans the future for your village and how it might get through a harsh winter, flood season, etc.?
I suppose whatever you are best suited to do is something you’re made to do. I suppose in a contribution-based society, concepts like money, fame, and fortune all disappear. And I suppose others might influence your ‘position’ in your community, as they recognize and appreciate you for natural-born skillsets that complement their own.
Village life – in this context – seems simple, right?
So why complicate life? Do we really need to compete for money, just so one person can be the breadwinner, bring home money for the family, and then decide how much s/he wants to hoard before spreading it amongst those we love? And do we really need to de-value our nurturers or homemakers for being the ones that lead to thriving life, stability of a home and family, and wise upbringing? Likewise, does it make any sense to designate ‘all’ women to this position, shaming every single woman on the planet who wishes to have a child into parenting as her full-time position for the first few years of life?
Somewhere, we lost the ball. At some point, we made a mistake; not an irreparable one, but a mistake in the sense of asking people to “work” in unnatural ways.
Let’s take a careful look at your biological design:
- Are you a thinker?
- Or maybe you’re built to react quickly in case of emergency?
- Or perhaps you’re well grounded, can endure just about anything for any amount of time, and find muscle easy to build?
If we’re going to label you in any way, we are best off labeling you outside of societal norms, and based upon your natural talents. And, in doing so, we might begin to value and appreciate you – and one another – every time we could use a helping hand outside of our sphere of influence and capability.
It seems so easy when we recognize each of us are built to eat, move, and think differently. Some of us, categorically speaking, make great teams because we can do the same tasks efficiently. Others of us make great teams because we complement one another and get just about anything done, once we set our minds to it.
So, it depends on the task, rather than competitive performance for a single role. What’s in the way of this form of collaborative living is, of course, this thing called greed. And on the flip side of greed, the antonym might be ‘faith’.
If each of us practices ‘faith’ that we will be taken care of by living as we were designed – because others will appreciate us and want us on their team – than we no longer will have to compete for positions and jobs designed by people who are born to be great at those positions and jobs. It’s a competition rigged by the people who created it, and in the best interest of nobody when we look at life from a higher perspective.
- You are appreciated for every moment of your life and everything you do.
- At the end of every day, you feel incredibly satisfied.
- Others will want to take care of you, as they will feel cared for. Anything they once valued as ‘better than’ will become meaningless in comparison to having you as their teammate.
- My father: surgeon, mathematical genius, strategic thinker, fast-action, unbelievable attention to minute detail, photographic memory.
- My mother: incredibly sensitive to her environment, people around her, pitch/tone of conversation, amazing chef, weather prediction, incredible sense of direction, and pattern detection.
- My brother: intuitive thinker, doer, unreal work ethic, perseverance for any task, sport, or obligation, innate sense of responsibility, incredible sense of direction, critical thinker, uncanny IQ.
- My wife: creative genius, playful, fun, can intuitively and quickly pick out the most incredible people in a crowd, unbelievable dancer, genius with sound/music, phenomenal at learning languages and understanding cultural differences for relationship building.
- My oldest son: savant with speech/communication/knowings, quick learner, focused on play and living life to the fullest, happy, great traveler, easily relatable to adults and children, able to comprehend the ‘universal’ human language across ages and races and perfectly convey what someone is saying whether they are a baby or adult, speaking a language we understand or we do not, incredible healing capacity and interest to heal others.
- My youngest son: life of the party, fun, playful, magical ability to charm any situation or anyone with the slightest smile, beyond strong for his age, determined, nurturing, sensitive to voice, emotion, and reactions of others to guide more positive interactions for all, incredibly diligent for any goal he desires to reach, extremely loving.
- And of course, me: Speak, persuade/influence, and engage in deep, meaningful relationships, heal others, integrate knowledge in a way I can keep and teach it, entertain a crowd, write/document applied learnings, persist against all odds, believe and make it real, strategic vision, fast-action, and speed of implementation.
Pretty impressive lineup, right?
I know I feel lucky, especially when I take the time to recognize who each person in my family ‘really’ is, and what they are capable of contributing when we form a team.
Now, there are plenty of areas in life my family lacks. And this is where the ‘village mentality’ comes into play. For example, we might seek and become friends with people who are born with the innate ability to:
- Build
- Engineer
- Design
- Remodel
- Understand nature, plants, and animals at an intuitive level
- Athletically maneuver through any situation, anytime
- Fight, defend, survey our community for any threats to life and prevent these occurrences from taking place
- Grasp higher purpose outside of human life and connect with the land of the invisible
- Teachers of the mind, who can help guide us into clarity, should our minds overpower our abilities to live on purpose
- Financiers (notice the importance of this is real, yet only one of many, many categories of contribution)
- Educators, directing us towards the future – while honoring lessons of our past for future generations – to save time, frustration, and accelerate evolution
- Dietitians, guiding us with how to eat for energy based upon our unique bodies and physiological make ups
- Coaches/mentors, who passionately seek to raise the bar for others and help them reach their capacities
- Lovers (people who bring love to every situation, no matter what, and demonstrate the potential for love in every cell of their bodies and every action they take)
- Artists, creating music that soothes the soul, objects that peek curiosity, or paintings that allow the mind to wander when it’s time to switch gears and reintegrate
If we step back from it all, and we really think about who we have in our lives – and who we ‘can’ have in our lives – it’s amazing to think what’s possible. One thing I know is that this model seems like more fun to me than crushing myself for years with ‘what I want to be when I grow up’; choosing from options someone else gave me that have nothing to do with who I am at a deep level, and instead have to do with my ability to either ‘succeed’ or ‘not succeed’ as society dictates.
No, not at all. This is simply being smart about how we live and what we do; and it’s about doing what we are best at, rather than fighting an uphill battle. Tribes in the Amazon already do this, as tribes also do in Africa. Humans live this way now. Native Americans lived this way in the past, and some tribes probably still do. It’s another model, and it has nothing to do with political affiliation whatsoever.
If you are the one who’s designed to ‘get all the money’ and bring it to your community, would you be willing to share, provided that each person does his/her responsibility and fulfills his or her duty to help contribute? And, on the flip side, if you’re not the ‘money person’, would you be willing to receive in this way for your efforts, even though they don’t seem so hard since they’re your natural abilities? Or would pride get in the way of your ability to let ‘money makers’ take care of you, as you help them in other ways?
You see, it’s not only a matter of sharing from the ‘giving’ side; giving doesn’t work without ‘receiving’, which means the act of receiving is, in fact, the most selfless act. If you really want to make a difference, give what you’re good at, and gracefully receive the rest.
Sent to you with love, honor, and in service,
