Reflections on Generosity by Community Member Tim Johnson

America is built on commerce. The original industrialists turned natural resources & human labor into fortunes, empires and power. The result was a widespread prosperity never before seen on planet earth.

Today, every homeowner lives in their own private piggy bank. Even poor people are overweight. And online investing all but ensures that my dollar will, sooner or later, become 2 dollars, given enough time.

Life, however, is built on generosity. The being with the quivering heart sees clearly that they can’t ensure their own survival for as much as a single day. They know that, each day, their own life becomes more and more improbable, and the life around them becomes more and more inevitable. The mama bear invests her life in her cubs without any guaranteed return on investment, because she knows that they only way anything happens is by giving everything away, without expectations.

In fact, the absence of guarantees is what brings the thrilling mystery to existence.

The next time you look at your bank account, ask yourself ” how much do I really need?” and ask “How much is me trying to keep something that I know, deep down, can’t be kept?”

Ask over and over again. And may the fruits of that contemplation set the heart free, not for a moment, not for a fiscal quarter, but forever.