Invest Your "Voice" and Choose Productive Actions

April 8, 2009 by David Eggleton

 "The most important expression of excellence is excellence in choosing the actions in which to excel."  -- Alvin & Heidi Toffler
 
To obtain what we need and what we want, we all make many choices every day.  Some seem to be inconsequential.  Others feel like burdens long before they're made.  Too many feel like the lesser of two evils.  Whatever the proportions of the types may be, the daily totals are beyond counting.  If practicing is perfecting, many of us should be excellent choosers.
 
We like to think we are excellent choosers.  Others are mistaken or have bad taste, not me.  The problem is, we are conditioned to focus on choosing what to consume, (hopefully) within our respective means.  We're not expected to produce, but to labor, earn, relax and purchase, if we're lucky enough to be under the wing of a viable enterprise.  Today, having self-determined work at all times is just for farmers, artists, musicians and craftspeople of all sorts.
 
Did you notice that?  Having work at all times is within your reach!  It is a choice.  You can choose to (develop ability to) produce wholesome, nourishing and meaningful goods and services -- for a local/regional market.  Still a specialist, you can choose to consume some of what neighbors offer, too.  You can choose to invest  in a local economy that develops more and more immunity from what ails THE ECONOMY.  Its troubles will only increase.
 
For each of us, every stimulus represents a fork in the path.  When at our best, we respond in manners aligned with our respective purposes and at our own paces, and we continue moving along.  When depleted, stressed, insecure or fearful, we might react, sometimes in an ugly, defensive way.  Then we feel off track and disoriented.  We cope and we scramble to get our purposeful feet under us so we can progress again.  Many in our society are coping and scrambling now.
 
Forks in the path are moments of truth, chances to be true to ourselves and our purposes.  If you want to invest your unique personal significance -- your voice -- in arrangements that produce well-being for all beings, so that an authentic human life can continue indefinitely around here, you must choose to limit and, finally, stop being true to (investing in) gigantic, abstract systems that are counterproductive, even destructive.
 
Most of us must finally identify as and act like excellent producers.  The sooner some begin the better, for practicing is perfecting and I don't envision all marching to the beat of the same drummer.