The future of life conditions on Earth will be very much determined by our ability to integrate those three values into our daily lives and the choices we make.
From our lifestyles to balance sheets, from schools to board meetings, from art to science,… RECIPROCITY, BALANCE & GRATITUDE must become an integral part of the choices we make. But most of all, they need to drive the way we produce and consume things.
We need to re-learn our capacity for RECIPROCITY. The process starts with repeating to ourselves, “First we give. Then we take.” It begins by paying attention as a form of reciprocity that reconnects people and nature into the symbiotic web of relations where the world around us is not treated as a warehouse of commodities, but a community of sovereign beings that maintain the ecosystems in BALANCE.
We need BALANCE to restore the opportunities for regeneration. It starts with the BALANCE between feminine and masculine, leading to a balance between individual rights and responsibilities, particularly the one that holds the duality of power: the destructive and creative sides of power, which lately has been leaning towards destruction and depletion. But balance doesn’t simply happen. It’s hard work. And to get the energy for the hard work upon us, we need GRATITUDE.
Because;
“GRATITUDE plants the seed for abundance.”
And
“Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires. GRATITUDE cultivates an ethic of fullness, but the economy needs emptiness… GRATITUDE doesn’t send you out shopping to find satisfaction: it comes as a gift rather than a commodity, subverting the foundation of the whole economy. That’s good medicine for land and people alike.” As Robin Wall Kimmerer beautifully puts it.
Boris Matijas 