Today I am feeling into how humans coming together one on one or in groups creates a whole new organism. We become the cells, body parts, ideals, actions and life force of a co-created organism. This organism has the potential to be very life-giving and/or life-taking depending on how we choose to engage each other, land we are on, animals and people here before us, organizational ways of being, industry, and local businesses and cooperations. I am also feeling into how we each have potential offerings via our passions and interests that we may get to access and that can act as gifts toward collective collaboration. I am not so sure how tied to a monetary form of giving and receiving our gifts, cares, and shares need to take on. Perhaps there are additional ways of relating as well.
With some of my offerings or services I have done trade in exchange for places to stay, for massage, and for energetic healing work. Under Capitalist structures and ideologies, engaging trade is not the norm and can be viewed in a way that suggests one doesn’t work to earn enough, is lazy, or is maladapted. The norm instead adheres to and tends to advocate for systems of production and exchange that have many trapped in a sort of survival mode chasing food, shelter and connection needs via roundabout ways catered to money accumulation and lengthy hours sometimes dedicated to actions and goals of corporations that folks don’t honestly resonate with or that fuel systems of planetary destruction, poverty, fragmentation, and isolation.
It may seem unrealistic to explore other possibilities but I cannot help but want to create better livelihoods and I look to resource and innate-passion sharing within co-created groups and spaces. Perhaps in small and larger ways we can try out ways of living that engage the monetary system, one another, and alternative forms of care and reciprocity simultaneously. Some off grid groups living together or large multi-generation families supporting one another are examples of not being solely responsible to a 9 to 5 job and the (often exploitatively-made) material it affords. Responsibility to one another and land we tend are so worth calculating. Maybe we keep aiming to make hybrid ways of living that acknowledge the reality of industry, law, and financial means while also bridging ourselves into co-creating different ways of existing and co-exisitng amongst one another and the earth where we live.
On a personal level, I have been living into some new ways in my own ways to a degree. I have done this by staying in homes and caring for pets both for free and for pay depending on mutually met needs around travel, living situation, home life, and work. Trusted House Sitters could actually be seen as kind of a neat site example of humans supporting one another and animals while sharing resources without the need for monetary gain. I have also had the opportunity to live with my best friend in their cute small cabin rental. We practice the gifts and annoyances that come with mutual care, honest communication, and sharing a space without any bedroom doors. We cook for each other, take turns shoveling snow, rotate buying or sourcing food, share about our feelings and how our days have gone, suggest events or classes to attend, give loving hugs, and just generally care for the physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being of one another. Most importantly, we make snow beings together! This one on one support has shown me that care and love for another does not have to be tied to romance or partnership. Rather, intimate care and closeness can be engaged between any individuals or groups who desire and are willing to do both the fun and the difficult.
On work offering levels I am gradually trying to ground into what it means to serve community versus the public. One feels personable and the latter distant and embedded in a culture of using people as capital and profit, even (or perhaps especially) within human service oriented professions. I am looking at what it looks like to continue to have my financial needs and the ethics of my supports feel healthy and balanced while also wondering where human to human relations and support without the need for money to enter the picture could exist. I see how payment validates the time, effort, and energy I give and how I get to put that exchange toward food and comfort. I also see that helping others feel less alone via journeying or to grow and eat fresh food via gardening ought not solely revolve around how much they can pay me. What I am getting at feels deeper to me than simply incorporating and offering a needs-based sliding scale, which I also do. The hidden sentiment in Capitalism, especially with some folks’ positionality, is something along the lines of, good luck hustling for food or feeling less alone cause I am not here for you unless you are tied to the dysfunctional hurtful systems enough to give me the means to tie into the systems further as well. Wow.
So, without money, is one simply alone when it comes to health needs around empathetic connection and physical well-being? And with money primarily at the fore, are we healthy or just adjusting to chaotic industrialization at the expense of humanness? Are there in-between options worth seeking and making? There is this raw human contact, self accountability, and relationship piece of living that has gotten so distorted. I cannot help but continue to wonder and explore what it looks and feels like to know worth and relationship a bit outside of prescribed notions of selfhood, work, and family.
–Jai
