Change

A More Generous World

The photo above was taken in 2010 and it stunned the world.

It was during the Zheng-Kai Marathon when Jacqueline Nyetipei Kiplimo did something unexpected. She was passed by a fellow male competitor struggling to drink water so at the moment she took it upon herself to help him. What made this picture so special was that she didn’t just help him drink at one drink station. She stayed to help him with ALL the water stations from the 6.2-mile marker when she encountered him to the 23-mile marker which slowed her race-winning pace and caused her to lose her first-place position and the $10,000 prize.

Jacqueline still somehow managed to place 2nd in the race, but what made this race so special and memorable was not her pace, her podium finish, or her race plan at all. It was her decision to do something unexpectedly generous or “humane”. It rose up in her “knowing” like something that was the right thing to do when she saw her competitor in need. She set aside her ego and fears and displayed grace and kindness putting his needs before her own results.

This week I’ve been pondering over human nature.

There’s a lot of discussion about the “evil” and destructive aspects of human nature in the news these days, but I believe that human beings are essentially good with free will and the possibility of living at different levels of consciousness.

Heroic acts are always a feature of crises and emergency situations. When a person’s life is endangered, it’s common for witnesses or bystanders to act impulsively to try to save them, even if this involves risk to their own lives. This applies to individual incidents with both humans and animal species - such as attempting to save someone from drowning or jumping down from a train platform to save someone who has fallen down onto the track - and also to major disasters such as earthquakes or airplane accidents.

We react before we think from our essential or divine self. The white wolf inside of us leads the charge.

If we get up into our heads and into our personality or small selves take over we will be allowing our own fear to enter the scene and probably worry more about our own safety and we’ll quickly fade into the background and become bystanders. We may call for help, but if our ego steps in louder to take over and drown out our essential self and our consciousness drops lower still we may even consider popping out our iPhones with ideas of selling the footage to news outlets.

The small self thinks and the True Self knows.

All of this is potential inside of us, depending on our level of consciousness. We’ll be looking at what impacts our levels of consciousness in depth in future essays. Today let’s do a little dive into the impact of our small impulsive selfless acts can impact all of us on a greater scale.

A few weeks ago while we were on holiday we visited our inlaws and they took us on a tour of the devastation left by Hurricane Ian this past September in Fort Myers. You can see from this picture that it was a mind-boggling mess. We were astounded by how much cleanup had already occurred and how people had rallied to help one another.

One of the stories that stuck with me shared by my inlaws was about a young man from another state that saw the plight of the people in the area on the news and felt compelled to come into the area where others were evacuating and help. He eventually collected contributions and set up a grill and made a warm lunch for anyone in need. He didn’t have much himself including a place to live and he couldn’t even afford a hotel so when someone saw what he was trying to do they offered him the use of their mobile home that they weren’t using so he could stay on the site to help his relief efforts. Other generous strangers donated food and drinks.

When we drove along the strip along the beach they pointed out his setup and I got goosebumps. He was experiencing homelessness but instead of focusing on his own lack he decided to help others that were traumatized and homeless themselves and with the debris cleared, he had a home of his own. Not to mention a temporary million-dollar clear view of the white sandy beach and pristine ocean from his new pad. People donated things to him and abundance flowed. His needs were met simultaneously. This is a great example of how the “Law of Attraction” works naturally as an expression of love.

Altruism is impulsive and natural to human beings.

It’s what is meant when we say “humane”. It means marked with compassion, sympathy, or consideration. It’s only usually when we have time to think or fear and doubt that we start to become selfish or “inhumane”.

Beyond the level of mind, there is a spiritual connection between us, which enables us to sense each other’s pain. I remember reading research that it causes feel-good chemicals like serotonin to be released not only in the brains of the giver and the receiver but also by any witness of the act even at a remote distance. We’re biologically wired for it in our vagus nerve to feel empathy.

We feel the impulse rise up in us to alleviate other people’s danger and suffering just as we feel the impulse to alleviate our own suffering - because ultimately we are all one. What we do to others, we do to ourselves we just don’t realize it fully from our small selves.

I’ll be exploring this powerful hidden connection in future writing because once we experience this and yield to it the mimetic resonance is powerful and unstoppable.

There are famous examples of this exponential power of how our love or the love we receive from others is felt and how it extends outwards in palpable ways.

Tony Robbins tells the story of growing up poor and his father being too proud to accept help at Thanksgiving. Someone came to his door with a turkey when they had no food. It was the most impactful event of his entire childhood to have been the recipient of that kind of generosity from a total stranger and now he is working to donate ONE BILLION meals for others through his foundation and work.

Oprah tells a similar story of her family not having enough to even “have” Christmas one year as a child. Facing the dread of going back to school and admitting to other students that she did not get anything because they couldn’t afford it, she felt devasted. On Christmas morning a nun came to their door with food and a wrapped gift just for her and it was such a profound moment in her life, she is now doing it for thousands of other children worldwide and she claims it is the single best experience of her life.

There are also millions of small moments every day by people doing amazing things for others. Neighbors bring food when someone is sick in the house. Across the road, when we drop off Christmas cookies our neighbor gives us honey from his bees. Other neighbors shovel our snow without asking so we cut their lawns and it becomes a fun anonymous game and fun to catch each other in the act. I heard a sermon at church once that if we could all just become better neighbors with the people on either side of us and across the road from us then the whole world would be cared for. Before I allowed my thinking mind to go online with the practicalities of us actually doing it, as an insight it resonated as true.

When I was teaching in Uganda about 30 years ago I saw something heartbreaking that we don’t often see here in Canada. People trying to manage living on the streets with disfigured or missing limbs. Children are socially rejected even as infants or abandoned by their families and live on the streets. They are called “bad omens” and are outcasts. I felt bad, but I didn’t think there was anything I could do to help.

A man named Glen Pascoe and his sister were also traveling in Uganda in the same areas years later and saw exactly what I saw. They had faith and a knowing that they could do something to help. They decided that they’d try to help fund a few surgeries and they came back to Canada and collected money from their friends and family in 2012 they funded 6 surgeries which eventually led to One4Another International, more fundraising, and after 10 years a surgical center in Jinja. In 2022 they performed 502 surgeries.

Having experienced the chronic pain of a congenital disease and having had my hips replaced in Canada and not having to pay a cent of it, this amazing work they do feels close to my heart. Uganda does not have public healthcare. Seeing surgical updates and the looks on their faces afterward is such a wonderful feeling. Something as simple as seeing your child walk is often described by parents that couldn’t otherwise afford the surgeries as the most beautiful thing that has ever happened in their lives.

The impact is immeasurable. This little boy’s name is Shahil and he was born missing a tibia but it’s clear by the look on his face that his life is on a new trajectory with his mobility restored.

Is this phenomenon of working to help others only for humans or does it affect all of life? Nature’s abundance knows no bounds. Every species tells a story. Here is just one little bug to illuminate the power of this (pun intended:).

This photo was published in the New York Times.

In the journal Science, researchers Moiseff and Copeland found that “when lightning bugs light up at random times, the likelihood of a female responding to a male in the deep, dark recesses of a mangrove forest is 3 percent. But when the lightning bugs light up together, the likelihood of females responding is 82 percent”.

The success rate increased by 79 percentage points when flashing as an interconnected community rather than as individuals.

I ran across this story about lighting bugs in a book my husband was reading a couple of years ago called “Big Potential” by Sean Achor and it climbed into my mind and has stayed with me.

The book was relating it to business principles, but Acher pointed out that while society teaches that it’s better to stand out or be the only bright light than be in a forest of bright lights. We want to graduate at the top of our class, get a job at the best company, and be chosen to work on the most coveted projects. We want our child to be the smartest, the most popular, and the fastest kid on the team and to hit home runs. When any resource seems to be limited, we are taught that we have to compete in order to differentiate ourselves from the rest of the pack.

And yet, his research shows that this isn’t actually the case, it’s a narrative that we have agreed with. Something we may not even be aware that we agree to by giving it an energetic handshake.

I remember hearing from an elder that in some native cultures competition is considered a sign of mental illness and at the time I didn’t understand what he meant. Now I think I do.

The lightning bug researchers discovered that when the fireflies were able to time their pulses with one another with astonishing accuracy, it allowed them to space themselves apart perfectly, thus eliminating the need to compete.

Like the lightning bugs, “once we learn to coordinate and collaborate with those around us, we all begin to shine brighter, both individually and as an ecosystem”.

But how did lightning bugs all coordinate their flashing lights?

Researchers Mirollo and Strogatz from Boston College and MIT found in the Journal of Applied Mathematics that, amazingly, “the fireflies do not have to see everybody to create coordinated action; so as long as no group of fireflies is completely out of sight of any other group, they can sync up with one another’s rhythms”.

In other words, it only takes a few nodes to transform the entire system. Our new understanding of “positive systems” teaches us that the same is true for humans.

As we begin to be more loving than fearful and become “positive nodes” (as in predominantly focused on feeding our white wolf selves:) in our families, companies, shared workspaces, and community, and help those around us improve their creativity, be more forgiving, and hone their abilities, and performance, we are not only helping the group become better; we are exponentially increasing our own potential for success.

Okay, don’t cringe let’s just say the obvious thing on your mind… The more you help people find their light, the brighter you both will shine. More on the light inside of us next week but for now, sadly most of us are still unconsciously buying the old story of lack, fear, and competition.

The one where we decided we were separate from one another, from God, and had the mad idea with our powerfully creative minds to go at it alone. Like cancer cells. Not to serve the well-being of the whole organism, but to serve ourselves even if we risk killing our host.

We’re so convinced we’re blinded to the utility of our efforts in a way that will never satisfy. So we work ourselves sick. We’re like Sysiphus pushing the rock up a mountain only to have it roll back on us. We try so hard to feel like we’re worthy. To be better, faster, and stronger. To be the hero of our own lives and stand out at all costs.

It sure keeps us busy. Doing. Consuming. Even changing our stunning natural beauty and intelligence into something someone else decided was better. Yikes. Did you know that last year we spent over $100 BILLION fixing our outsides on things like plastic surgery, cosmetics, and the diet industry alone? Some of that diet industry money is mine and I’d like it back.

What is going on? Why are we so afraid to live as our own true selves?

Scott and I were watching the TV show “The Voice” and the blind auditions where the coach’s chairs were turned away so they could just hear the voice not see the artist the other night and a beautiful woman with the voice of an angel sang her heart out and was selected. She was also wearing the biggest false eyelashes I’ve ever seen. She was going on TV and I’m sure wanted to look her best but they were so giant and distracting that it was hard to focus on her voice and I lamented in my own mind that I wished she could see her and appreciate her own natural beauty but maybe I just didn’t understand and she was an artist expressing herself. Then my husband said out loud something like…. “Can you tell me why girls wear those fake eyelashes?”

I didn’t really have a good answer, but I know that we have been sold the idea that thicker, longer lashes are better or more beautiful and a whole new industry has been born and fed by influencers to feed and fix that to assuage our fear. After a quick google search I was surprised to see the numbers and long-term projections in the false eyelash market as an industry in the country this girl was from:

In the United States, I read in Marianne Williamson’s recent blog that basically “in the past 48 years we have transferred $50 trillion dollars from the bottom 90 percent to the top 1 percent of Americans”.

Is there a deeper truth that we have trouble allowing ourselves to see in our capitalist economy?

My husband lovingly reminded me of this truth one day when we had 2 kids under 4 and 2 dogs and I was tired and probably feeling resentful or had some unhelpful loop or narrative projecting some kind of controlling statement or criticism about how I felt like I needed to do everything until he said….

“Nona, you do realize that we’re on the same team”.

He was right.

My heart still sinks whenever I get into my ego and I forget this and start judging others for acting from fear.

We are ALL doing it we just don’t even realize it.

We just keep getting sold by others and forgetting that what’s deepest in us is love.

Where did all of this fear and a sense of lack come from that now even our eyelashes don’t measure up?

Well, we could trace it further back to our separation and denial of the divine.

Today let’s look at one very small but significant economic example of how our fearful what’s in it for me kind of thinking (even from one of us that is very convicted) can have a negative impact on the majority of us as it builds steam. As we all know, it’s just as easy for us to “create” as it is to “miscreate”.

My friend recently lent me this book and it had an impact on me and as you can see from the subtitle inspired this post.

My friend left 2 post-it stickies at two different places that really struck me as significant. The first was a section that discussed the most famous economist in the 1970’s that almost singlehandedly drove our economy into something called “financial maximization”. You may recognize his name, Milton Friedman. He was a Nobel prize winner and he advised both the Regan and Thatcher administrations and remains one of the most influential economists in the world.

At the time, the war in Viet Nam was in full swing, young soldiers were losing their lives and instead of companies moving towards what had initially motivated them, do for the greater good. He began to preach in lectures and in the New York Times that thinking altruistically was all wrong. That the idea that a company owes anything to society is absurd. That a company is not a real person, that it has no responsibility except to maximize profits.

My heart sank when I read this.

This worldview spread through our top business schools like wildfire in the 1970s and 1980s and has been devastating for us and the planet. We’ve been all about money, power, profit, market share, caring for shareholders first and foremost, and making as much money as possible. It affected us culturally too. I’m embarrassed to admit this now but in my own fear and desire to fit in I can remember insisting on looking like I had money to burn wearing designer labels in high school… polo Ralph Lauren, Lacoste. Status symbols are powerful fear feeders. Did you know that there is even a purse out there right now that costs $3.8 million?

It was a palpable turning point in our economic history that has led us down a dark path of loans, debt, and living beyond our means I’m not an economist but I have direct experience being in debt and using credit cards in compulsive ways to assuage my own fears of not being enough, so I think we have all seen and felt its effects whether we dare go out in public in our own eyelashes or not.

History may have turned out differently if he hadn’t made it seem subversive or anti-freedom to have companies mandated by the government to take social responsibility to care for the communities they profited from. We even started to collectively be referred to as “consumers”, market segmenting and big money advertising was born and today some of us have not even considered the problem that we’re facing pointing back to this economic development.

Today it’s easier for us to connect the dots. I’m sure Milton thought he was doing the right thing and had care and concern to make profits for himself, his family, and his clients and to be an outstanding economist to make money in a market economy. He may have not even considered the long-term implications of the effects of this overconsumption and growth-based economy not just in our pocketbooks but even in our health and relationships and trickle into our politics.

New year, new sales budgets to meet with a growth factor. We are asked to do more for less.

Most of us are totally unaware that this was a decision. An influential man’s ideas that we took and ran with. We believe this is just the way the world is.

That it can’t be changed.

This has been decades in the making. Harvard, Wharton, and every school began to teach and focus on the extraction of wealth and the minimization of costs. Tax avoidance, political lobbyists, and a decrease in the quality of products and services. Freezing wages, slashing budgets, and mass firings. Do more with less. Increase productivity. Lower quality so there will be more sales and a shorter lifespan. Disposable 52 fast-fashion micro seasons.

More. More. More.

The snowball built up speed and size as it went and here we are today and we’re all being impacted in ways we are not even aware of.

Like even our fridge.

We’ve only had our popularly branded stainless steel fridge for 6 years and well, you be the judge… granted, it looks pretty nice on the outside.

But the ice machine is falling apart and plastic pieces are breaking in every section almost daily now. Lids have cracked off our “cheese” drawer and our fruit and veggie draws don’t even close properly anymore. It probably lasted as long as they planned it would.

Remember when we were kids and those heavy avocado-colored fridges lasted 30 years? I guess that’s not good for business.

Can we still be profitable and serve?

Unoquivicably yes.

Companies like Patagonia. Tom’s Shoes. Kickstarter. So many amazing altruistic companies are making a positive difference in the world and remaining profitable.

Giving back.

This is not a new concept it actually predates Friedman.

We just took a detour into fear and lack but we can return to love.

It’s a choice. A decision.

The author (Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler) highlights another book that greatly influenced his work about Japanese businessman Konosuke Matsushita called “Not For Bread Alone”.

Matsushita was an extraordinary leader. In 1918 he started one of the first electrical companies in Japan which he ran for 40 years. You’ll probably recognize the more modern company name: “Panasonic”.

He began to consider the similarities between religion and business management, saying, "Human beings need both material and spiritual prosperity. Religion guides people out of suffering toward happiness and peace of mind. And business, too, can contribute by providing the physical necessities required for happiness. This should be its primary mission."

He addressed his employees in 1932 with this now-famous speech:

“The mission of a manufacturer is to overcome poverty, to relieve society as a whole from the misery of poverty and bring it wealth. Business and production are not meant simply to enrich the shops or the factories of the enterprise concerned, but all of society. And society needs the dynamism and vitality of business and indurstry to generate it’s welath. Only under such conditions will business and facttories truly prosper.”

Can you guess what Matsushita’s 250-year company goal was?

“THE ELIMINATION OF POVERTY FROM THIS WORLD”.

Wow.

My heart grew 2 sizes when I read this.

When we are willing to see the power of our true essential or spiritual nature and act more from that place than from our egoic desires and fear, our lives and the world will change.

It’s a decision we make.

A wave of change is coming. What else have we collectively created in fear?

We are in an evolutionary process, but we can’t move beyond this transitional stage of global suffering if we keep replicating what we’ve known personally and collectively.

We saw some of the wild possibilities and the power of this natural intelligence at work during covid in pictures. The air quality was able to improve quickly once nature was left alone to do her healing thing and we stayed out of it.

The same healing power is INSIDE of us. The inherent divine, that life force, the primary organizing principle or source that created everything is present as an aspect of what we are.

The true self is what we choose to align and listen to. When we are quiet, open, and willing it will imprint ideas in us and we will feel it as a knowing.

We can’t make something whole or Holy or force changes on ourselves or others, but we can deny the Divinity in anything or anyone and block the awareness of love’s presence, and continue to suffer.

Feed the fear or the love and watch it grow.

That is entirely up to us. We are 100% responsible for all of our creations.

Greta listened to her inner knowing and skipped school.

Tony listened to his inner knowing and the turkey dinner donated by an anonymous family resulted in his goal of serving a billion meals to others in his lifetime.

Oprah listened to her inner knowing after getting a small doll from a nun at Christmas to helping thousands of kids get their own special gifts with their names tagged on them at Christmas.

Jacqueline listened to her inner knowing and selflessly helped a fellow competitor stay hydrated in a marathon and the news went around the world and is still circling a decade later.

The man experiencing homelessness and his own hard times listened to his inner knowing and traveled from out of state to Fort Myers to grill warm lunches for victims of the recent tornado in Fort Myers and has the whole town talking and now it’s reached you.

Glen and his sister saw children suffering on the streets in Uganda and had a knowing that he could help and now over 2,500 have had the chance to run and play.

Matsushita listened to his inner knowing and built a company on spiritual principles to help alleviate poverty and has provided for thousands of communities, employees, and their families.

Last but not least, even the fireflies listened to their inner knowing and coordinated their flashing lights (and hopefully got lucky;)

We can change anything we perceive in the world by changing ourselves and which part of us we respond to and where we put our minds and our dollars.

What about you?

I’d love to hear from you if you are moved to do something from your own inner knowing to help another that may make no rational sense.

Just simply reply to this message if you’d like it to remain between us or comment below to help inspire other readers.

With love,

Nona

ps. Need some inspiration? Maybe some music will help. Beyoncé in her inner knowing said yes and sang this song for the UN just over a decade ago and 137 million people watched it since then.