Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Essence is the disappointment antidote.

So there we were, Chris, Erin and I spending the evening "together" while staring at our respective laptop screens. Tanissa was in her room, worshipping her own laptop.


I mentioned the craziness of it and everyone agreed, spent a couple of minutes reminiscing about the good old days of a few years ago when there were no laptops in the house and we would spend evenings doing art and talking. Then we all went back to our screens.


But we still talked to one another, the way people talk maybe when playing cards, a sort of background conversation that has a strange meditative feel to it, maybe specifically because it is not the main focus. An artist might think of it as "atmospheric conversation."


At one point, Erin mentioned a friend of his who had made a huge amount of money (think 30 million dollars) by  being involved with Amazon at the very beginning. The amount of money blew a little circuit in my mind and we started to talk about the usual "what would I do if I had that much money." 


Erin said that if he had tons of money, he would run a "scholarship" foundation, one where he would give money to people who wanted it for special projects and could convince him of the validity of their vision.


I liked that and loved how excited he looked as he talked about it.


Then Chris, who is usually the quieter  of the bunch (Erin and I can yak for hours), looked up from his screen and mentioned "kiva.org"


Wow. 


Within seconds, I was looking at a site that offered almost exactly the same essence as what Erin had just  wistfully been talking about!


Never mind 30 million dollars. For 30 dollars, you and I (and Erin) can make a huge difference in the vision of entrepreneurs in other countries. Today. 


I will let you take a look the site as I believe you may find it fascinating (the repayment rate is a heart lifting and humbling 98.5%)


I went to bed feeling blessed by having witnessed such a pure - and instantaneous - example of Essence vs. Form. 


When we speak in Essence, we are often able to take action today, to go from "if I ... XXX, then ... XXX" and go straight to today.


To me, Essence is the disappointment antidote. 

1 comment:

  1. I've been learning about micro loans and how effective they are at alleviating poverty. I love that there's a way that I can help perpetuate such a great idea!

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