038 · Our Future Together

Synergy and multiplication...

Photo by Grace Kerina: Basel, Switzerland, 2011

A tale offered as a meditation, a touchstone for a feeling that leads to a being.

Imagine a society that values, above all, your willingness to be yourself. After much research and observation, this society has proven that the biggest boon to society as a whole comes when individuals get happy. So society pays you to realize your deepest dreams. And keeps paying you to dream again.

You go online and notice that your monthly payment from society has increased because of your breakthroughs last month in getting to know yourself. Nothing concretely measurable may come from your new comfort in your own skin, but society knows that you’re now even more of an asset to the collective and it wants to reward you.

When you came of age, you automatically began receiving a monthly payment from society that was enough to live on. As you’ve found your way, following clues about your interests and hints about your passions, weaving them into a life you truly love, your income has continued to go up. Incomes in this society never go down. Only up.

Today, you woke up with an idea that had you grabbing for paper, then you kept writing onto a second page as one idea led to another. While eating breakfast in the back garden, you alternated talking with your family, watching the bees, and musing on your new idea, which feels so exciting it makes your pulse race.

In your work room (which you don’t have any problem calling a work room, because in this society work is associated with joy), you get busy researching elements of your idea online, then you call your best friend to talk it over. Now your friend is excited, too, and as you talk the idea forms wings and changes shape into something even better. Synergy and multiplication and amplification begin to take hold.

More colleagues and friends and supporters are drawn into the discussion. Happy technicians get googly spiral eyes when told about the idea and immediately lapse into heated discussions packed with jargon. You leave them to do their thing, waving at them on your computer before closing the app, knowing they’ll turn up brilliant ways to help bring the idea into the world.

Meanwhile, you take a break, biking with your son to the farmer’s market. While talking with the wrinkled man at the mushroom stand about the weather, his obsession with rare fungal varies, and bees, he says something that makes you suddenly see your new project sideways. From this new perspective, you notice a major flaw. Intrigued by his way of looking at the world, you ask him what he’s doing this afternoon. Would he be willing to stop by your place for a conference call with some technicians? He laughs and shrugs. Sure. Why not?

You turn around and see that your son has run on to his current internship with the local theater costume designer—so keen to get started he forgot to say goodbye. The designer waves to you from the doorway of the theater and you exchange smiles in shared acknowledgment, remembering the excitement of your own early internships.

You continue on into town, making stops at the art store, the office supply store, and the bakery. On your way home, you notice a bunch of bikes in the driveway of your mom’s friend’s house and remember that she recently got back from a trip. You decide to drop off some fancy mushrooms from the farm stand as a welcome home gift.

You walk in the back door to find your mom’s friend and several others in earnest discussion. They’ve been trying to reach you and now here you are. They’ve got a favour to ask. Would you be willing to use your expertise to help someone they know who’s having a challenging time today? Of course you would. The person needs exactly the skills you have, and you’re known throughout the region to be the best at it. In fact, you’re free now.

After a couple of hours in quiet conversation with the friend who’s having a challenging time, including a slow walk through the woods at the edge of town, the problem is well on its way to being resolved, with lessons learned, and you’re both feeling satisfied and sated from the effort. You bicycle together to your mom’s friend’s house, heading around to the backyard, greeted by gentle smiles, hugs, and nods. Eventually, everyone settles at the big table under a spreading tree, noon sunlight flickering down through the leaves. Lunch is provided today by your mom and her friends, who’ve cooked up such a spectacular thank-you feast you may not need any dinner.

By the time you leave, your face hurts from laughing so much at the stories shared. The new friend you’ve helped manages a smile and squeezes your hand in gratitude, which makes your day. No money changes hands. Her more relaxed face, her straightened posture, your feeling of having used your skills to make a difference are all the payment you need, and society is already sending you that monthly income for just this reason.

As you head home, you bike past little studio-stores where passionate afficionados offer their creations and inventions, their crafts and books and engineered thingamajigs you never would have conceived of but which neatly solve issues you hadn’t imagined solutions could exist for. You pass familiar houses and gardens and playgrounds for all ages. You don’t see any billboards or ads, because there aren’t any, but every now and then you see a poster put up by society in a discrete frame low down on the side of a building or at a bus stop, showing the face of someone who looks both totally normal and really happy. The poster consists of only that face and three words of text: What is me? Society wants to remind you to ask yourself this question. Society depends on you being as “me” as you can be.

The faces on the posters change every week and they’re never anyone you know. Sometimes the face is pale, sometimes brown, or older, younger, hairy, scarred, and everything else. But every face is absolutely beautiful.

What is me? you wonder as you ride along, steering your bike into gentle swerves. Who am I when I’m most myself?

Flickering patterns of shadow and sunlight play across your bare arms. Birds chatter and sing. That excellent lunch feeds nourishment through your body. You feel strong and secure and ready for whatever comes next. As you catch the first glimpse of home through the trees, you stand up to pedal faster, to get back to your work room sooner, because you suddenly have a great idea...

About the Photo | Cafe Courtyard

Basel, Switzerland, 2011

During a late-September visit across the border to Switzerland from where I lived in southwestern Germany, my day-tripping friend and I nosed around Basel’s byways and courtyards, eager for visual and culinary finds. As we wandered, we kept clear of busy bike lanes and made a point to stop in at a big bookstore with a substantial English-language section.

The couryard in this photo was not an unusual find. In other European cities I was more familiar with (Freiburg and Berlin), and in small towns I visited in France and Germany, I discovered many a cobblestoned courtyard loaded with trees, bicycles, cafes, and a fountain. I haven’t lived in Europe since 2014, but I still miss and revere those courtyards for their flavor of small-community relaxation and how they naturally prioritized pedestrian and bicycle transportation.

Let’s meet there. :)