Community as wealth
Why redefining where wealth resides in our lives enables us to live with REAL and wild abundance
I feel so rich lately. Truth is by economic standards, I am. One of the ways in which I feel wealthy is in the wide range of experiences that I’ve had over the first five decades of my life. I’ve had the good fortune to live in lots of countries + to travel to loads more. With each adventure outside of the US, I find myself metabolizing the truth about the US economy and that is, it doesn’t work for everybody. In fact, it works for very few. There are other ways to experience wealth and I am striving hard in the last few years to shift my reality around ALL of the ways in which I experience wealth, value, and care.
That said, capitalism is real. Capitalism loves to whisper to me about how I need more stuff. It instructs me all day long about how I do not have enough, and how I should hold on to what I do have. It cheers me on for working and producing and commodifying, in traditional ways, toward having more stuff and more money.
I am challenging these voices, these memos, to consume, produce, and hold tightly. I am listening to where and when I feel activated by these calls to have, make, and take more. I am encouraging myself to consider what is true in these invitations to shop as therapy, work more, give less, and to question where + when I feel that I am being lied to.
I will start by stating clearly that engaging in this enterprise at all is something that a certain group of people get to do. Quiet time for reflection; this is the pastime of a person whose basic needs are being met. Mine are, in wild abundance. I do not take that for granted and it is, indeed, because I am at the top of the social and economic food chain (almost, I am a woman so I earn less and am valued less than the dudes). I feel it is essential that I get clear with myself about what wealth means so that I can do what I mean to do with it.
More and more, wealth to me, lives in my relationships. The truth is, the jobs I’ve landed and therefore the money I’ve made/make, are direct results of the relationships I have. So there is a powerful way “relationship” (as a verb) translates to professional opportunity for me and therefore into financial wealth. I am grateful for the professional doors opened, bridges extended, and opportunities fostered for me through my relationships. I would have had a very different professional road without the friends and colleagues who showed up for me along the way. That generosity is something I am actively trying to pay forward to others.
That said, I am trying to redesign my experience of wealth. I suspect that, in part, this is a reflection of arriving safely in middle age. My career is doing fine; I’ve settled into what I am good at and what I am not. I try to stick to what I know so as to easily leverage my expertise for the clients I support. Work smarter, not harder. I feel confident and comfortable in my ability to find work, sustain work, and the rate I charge for the work I do is what I am “worth”. And the last bit, what is my worth? This is where I am trying to get and stay curious.
What am I worth?????
I am worthy of love, care, kindness, connection, safety, beauty, rest, play, joy, adventure, and health. So are you. We all are. Money, wealth, and access to safe and engaging economic opportunities are rights, things we are each worthy and deserving of, as well. Work feeds us literally and metaphorically are not experiences we should have to earn.
As a highly ambitious woman in the world, I have too often looked for satisfaction in a list of what I am worthy of through my work and professional relationships. In large part the reason for that orientation was practical. I only had so many hours in each day and after tending to my kids, my marriage, my household, and my job there was little time or energy left to find my satisfaction and worth in a friendship. So, like a talented multitasker who loves efficiency, I looked for safety, connection, care in my work. Spoiler: I was often deeply unsatisfied. For decades.
Now I am actively striving to redefine what wealth means to me. I am centering this exploration in my friendships and relationships. Some of the lessons I’ve learned about myself, my capacity, my worth, so far in this experiment:
I can only responsibly care for 8-10 friendships at a time. For too long I sustained myself through shallow sips at the Well of Connection. I don’t do this anymore. Now I commit to presence, maintenance, and asking for what I need in my few, precious friendships. I drink deeply, now, at the Well of Connection and I am feeling all the richer for it.
When I am meeting someone for the first time and the question that Americans love to open with, what do you do, is posed to me, I try to get creative in my response. I read, nap, swim, travel. I am parenting teenagers. I am striving to be a good friend. These are things that I do.
When I am considering my status in the world I start with my relationships, not my title or income. I consider how I am caring for my people, the planet, the communities I am a part of. Am I being a good steward of those areas of wealth? How can I do better?
Community IS wealth. This is one of my core values. I am loving my day to day shift towards centering connection and presence. More and more I am letting work simply be what I do to bring in funds, enabling me to live my best life while caring for others. Legacy, folks, is where my heart and head are right now. I am leaning in. All the way.
Onwards, y’all.
Edward Jones has a new ad campaign this year “What’s your rich?”. It’s lovely, as it invites us to explore very much this topic.
It’s rarely money that gives us the experience of wealth, but instead our relationships, our experiences.
Kudos to you, dear fellow explorer!