Keys to Liberty

I just traveled to Flamingo Crossing for a dish of delicious homemade ice cream. I don't know if everything tastes better in Key West or if this dish is truly some of the greatest iced cream ever, but it sure tastes like epic, coconut and key lime style.

I sat down, pen in hand, to write about Memorial Day. What is the cost of liberty? What price do we pay as a society to ensure our unalienable rights? What degree of respect and honor should we show to those who stand on the frontlines of these questions, where theory and conjecture meet physical reality and blood becomes the currency of liberty? Utmost respect, tremendous honor.

Earlier today I felt a movement of expression, a song came forth from the springs of my soul calling out the demons of fear, regret, shame, and such. Call it a declaration of personal liberty. Now, I'm here in Key West, Florida for the better part of four weeks. This time on the island is more than a vacation for me, it's an opportunity to grow in compassion, to stretch those areas of my heart most hardened through my past.

I find I am always on the giving or receiving end of action, of essence. At times, this activity has brought about, or been born of, negative emotion. Key West, for all of its glory, is also a crucible of my emotional development. Consider an image of my heart--my love, compassion, peace, empathy, security, fear, and all those constructs that guide to whom and how I share my heart--brought into a great crucible and challenged by the fires of God's tapestry.

I've written, either publically or privately, about dancing with the tapestry of life. It's a marvelous thing, a source for delightful poetic inspiration. Mind you, though, that dancing with glory is not always a pleasant waltz. Growing in life, growing in God, growing in love, never ceases to bring new opportunities to go higher. Instead of all life being one repetitive cycle, it is as though there are infinite cycles stacked on top of each other. With that in mind, there come times in life--depending on our awareness, desires, mindsets, fears, etc.--were we are presented with opportunities to "jump" from one cycle to the next. Call it a quantum leap or maturation of spirit, I've found these opportunities invariably entail, nay, demand great faith and a challenge to the fiber of my character.

The dance, then, evolves if and only if I am willing to learn new moves, rhythms, styles. It is in this learning where we are stretched, tried, and challenged to grow beyond our limits. Just as working out will cause stale muscles to feel nearly torn before the glorious six-pack is born, so those hardened areas of our hearts must be humbled before our spirit can grow to bring greater healing and peace in our lives.

I've had opportunities to grow and bring healing in these most tender-jaded places before, and I'm thankful that I have become wiser over time in how I engage--in how willing I am to go through trials for the sake of a future more ripe with love and peace.

In my case, in this case, the matter is forgiveness. It is relevant just as much to feelings of myself as it is to my feelings of significant loved ones. Forgiveness is not words to ease another's feelings. Forgiveness is not choosing to be quiet about past offenses... Forgiveness is tremendously greater: Absolution; it is the absolving of all past record on our heart-tablets; it is wiping clean the slate: tabula rasa. Forgiveness is the greatest liberation, clearing our vision all preconceived filters so the full radiant brilliance of who we now see, of who we now are, might shine into and out from our hearts.

Coffee Shops are Cradles of Civilization

                Here in the halls of Chicago’s Harold Washington Library, stacks to my front, State Street to my back, I invested some time into a book called “Groundswell.” Published in 2008, this result of Forrester Research’s Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff delineates the trend of people to turn to each other for information, goods, and services traditionally provided by classic organizations. While this social trend is a staunch reality for most all reading my text, it nevertheless is an enlightening read* and promises to be an invaluable, timeless guide for entities seeking to dance with (capitalize on) the “groundswell.”
*Disclaimer: I’ve only read Chapter One.

                Now as I wrapped up the first chapter, I considered the condition of “The Coffee Shop,” a delightfully original Café run by Tammy and Richard. Now I can’t speak to Richard’s character, as I may have briefly met the man once, but it’s safe to say that Tammy fits the maternal bill for the block, fitting, because The Coffee Shop is nestled off of Sheridan and Broadway, right on the bustling corner of Loyola University in Chicago’s North Side. The local students will always find a sense of belonging there, not because any physical elements align with the “identity” of a student. On the contrary, the shop décor is such that each visitor is granted enough of a mental canvas to interpret whatever they please. There exists something else in this space, a layer of metaphysical atmosphere that compliments the open-canvas feel. This extra goodness I contribute to Tammy’s personality: a constantly present, maternal yet no-holds-barred smile of a Jewish woman.

                All this was apparent enough to me before I began writing this post. Now what began stewing in my mind upon finishing the first chapter of Groundswell is the idea of The Coffee Shop serving as a people-driven news outlet. Tammy is currently in the process of revving up her social media presence. So my thoughts are now left with now is a blend of social engagement, groundswell, and coffee shops. The coffee shop is emblematic of community blending. It, the idealistic form of a “coffee shop,” is where people gather on the surface level to engage in a market transaction. Even so, there is a deeper reality to its essence; the coffee shop is an incubator of relationships. The act of sipping coffee, tea or munching on a sandwich in public is a tradition. When multiple people come to celebrate their traditions under one house, the coffee house evolves a cradle of civilization. Any form of thought or revolution may grow from this shared experience.

                So I thought, “what if The Coffee Shop housed a community radio? What would that look like?” Given the dense student population, there surely would be enough time and interest in matters for people to engage, right? The “radio” could take many forms, perhaps it would be more of a publication, blending offline news blurbs posted on-site with a blog online. In terms for Tammy, a significant question would be “what is my voice?” and “Where do the interests of my community fit into my model for growth?” Regardless of whether Tammy would want her space to evolve into a center of community discourse, the principle idea remains in my thought-space: “How does a physical locale come to keep the community pulse?” This community pulse is the intrigue, passion, and events of the local population. What does a new outlet look like that reflects the agenda of a small community? Thirty years ago, this question was quite a different animal. In today’s world of globalized ideas, the challenge enters the territory of convoluted integration shared by theoretical physics.

                Obviously the idea is still in formative stages of “stewing.” I imagine this one will take years of preparation involving study, collaboration, and trial-and-error in community settings. The end result, which truly is just the beginning of our next social age, is modeled by this challenge from economist Daniel Cohen: “A post-industrial economy is actually the union of two opposing terms: the world of images and ideas, which are globalized, and the world of direct relationships, of F2F[Face to Face], which are localized.”

There are many ways by which local gathering places can be made more relevant to the lives and interests of local community members. Some of these ways involve the space bending its identity to allow local citizens a degree of autonomy in shaping the direction the space(business?) pursues. I’m very interested in what this looks like, both in terms of strengthening community-wide identity and bridging emotional connectivity gaps between local spaces and the “ether” of the internet. How can this train of thought lead to a people more enabled to aggregate around issues, pool resources, and effectively drive change on local and global issues? That’s the gold, right there. Dig it up so we may all be enriched!

Economics of Life

The fundamental idea of economics regards our use of resources. I've recently taken a strong interest in the study of economics, and by "recent" I mean over the past three years. Now, curiously enough, I haven't taken such an interest in my own personal economics. There is a old adage; it runs something to the effect of "don't miss the forest for the tree in front of you." The notion here is that we can get so terribly distracted by the day-in, day-out shenanigans of life that we miss the big picture--the details can swallow all of our attention. The result is that we miss out on the greater glory of each moment, we miss the entire symphony because one fluke flute sets us off.

I tend to have my issue with the opposite problem: I miss the trees right in front of me because I am so enamored by the forest. Now this is great in many respects, until I run head-first into an mighty oak. When I wake up to reality, lying on the forest floor, the swaying leaves above my eyes carry the banner of a message: PAY ATTENTION AND DISCIPLINE YOUR EYES. In terms of life vision, I'd call this "discernment." I have fallen prey in the past to great ideas that showed some mystical promise but failed to provide the foundation I needed for life in the present. Now in a more tangible sense of physicality and psyche, I'm seeing a need to exercise some economic know-how in management of my own resources, namely: time, money, creative capital.

Most will recognize this basic life-management as "discipline." Yes, the economics of life is discipline, and my efforts over the past few weeks have been to turn knowledge(say, economic principles) into practice(applied economics). As such, I have ramped up the nutrition of my diet, increased the frequency of my physical work-outs, committed to some form of mental exercise every day(yay Sudoku!) and I've made a conscious effort to exercise my spiritual muscles on a daily basis.

The inspiration for this came from an underlying need in life to get my "house" in order; call it spring cleaning of my temple, my essence. Prompted by my sister, Miriam Conners, to look for creative management resources for my brother, Benjamin Conners, I found some books by John Maxwell through my wonderful sister, India Winbush. The Maxwellian insight got my gears turning and gave me just the final nudge I needed to engage with some serious evaluation of my long-term goals in life. The great question here is: "what do I deem important?" So I arrived at the conclusion that in my life, I am most interested in holding good health in three areas:

1. Spiritual
2. Mental
3. Physical

Now this translated to the need for frequent exercise in each area. Until this past Saturday, however, I was missing one crucial element: creativity. I suppose it is something that I take for granted--my insight, flow, poet. I have always viewed my creativity as an untamable enigma. It's tied to a force which ebbs and flows, not necessarily bound to any temporal measure, but inexplicably tied to metaphysical natures: euphoria of love, deep emotions of challenge or loss, grandeur of justice. So then there are conditions, however difficult to define, in which my creativity thrives. Is it possible then, to cultivate creativity? Well this question brushes upon the canvas of my life thesis: How can we turn creative capital into fluid currency? For years I have been considering this question in light of our global and local community economies. Never, until a couple days ago, when my dear friend Rachel Hill made the simple comment "you should be a writer," did I take this thesis question and apply it to my own life. A number of months ago, another dear old friend, Mikaella Ashley, told me the same thing. The fact that I should have found such a rich impact this time around from the very same words speak to the importance of actively nurturing awareness in our lives. Last year, I wasn't thinking "how can I make myself better?", "in what areas in my life should I apply greater discipline?", "What are my personal goals, not goals for my work, my study, or the world, but those things that are of supreme value to me and for me in the days of my future?"

Because I have prepared the soil in my life, the seeds that come along can immediately thrive on the nutrients I've cultivated. There is a great lesson buried here, one that has the potential to enrich my entire life. I realized that writing is one of those creative expressions which I supremely enjoy. I have always known this, but there is a difference between a realization and a revelation. The former is a connection of two dots, the latter is a construction of a foundation upon which wisdom may accrue. This is to say, the revelation of writing as something I enjoy compounded with my awareness of the need to budget my resources and I came to see that my creativity is something I greatly value and I never want to see it accidentally fall by the wayside. I believe it is possible to cultivate an environment in which creativity may thrive. The most important thing for any environment begins with space. With regards to creativity, the first thing I must do is set aside the time, because few things are more important to me than my creative expression.

All of this to say, this blog is a reflection of my creative discipline, a branch of the economics of life.