Another brilliant example of paying it forward that has spread in a substantial way is the concept behind Karma Kitchen, based out of Berkeley, California. It began as a social experiment created by a group of friends, to see if a restaurant could be run entirely on generosity. Run completely by volunteers, Karma Kitchen is a restaurant where the menu does not have any prices, and the check reads $0.00 every time. The footnote on the check reads: “Your meal was a gift from someone who came before you. To keep the chain of gifts alive, we invite you to pay it forward for those who dine after you.” This sounds like a plan that could never work, right? The core principles of traditional economic theory often make it seem as if humans are only motivated by their own financial interests. But perhaps that doesn’t tell the whole story. Perhaps there is a threshold of basic needs beyond which human beings would rather gain satisfaction through the building of community ties than from chasing additional greenbacks. Perhaps this is why, over the past several years, Karma Kitchen has begun to branch out into new locations. In Hayward, California, 20 miles south of Berkeley, another branch of the Karma Kitchen has become operational. Additional locations have also opened up in Washington D.C., Chicago, Tokyo, and Ahmedabad. Collectively, these restaurants have successfully used this model to serve over 40,000 meals, and have received over 30,000 hours of service from volunteers. Karma Kitchen restaurants are pushing our world forward; actualizing their vision of creating a future that is based on trust and abundance, rather than transaction and scarcity. What would a future look like in which more and more industries began testing out and implementing this gift economy type of model?
Paying it forward is such a simple yet powerful idea that any one of us could potentially be implementing in some way, right now, today. Think about how many potentially unhappy, stressed, heartbroken, angry, abusive, or violent individuals could be compelled to reconsider their views and level of faith in humanity simply because one kind stranger went out of their way to help them without expecting anything in return. Each one of us has the ability to decide every day about whether we are going to act from our higher self or our lower self. If you haven’t been able to find a good reason to believe in humanity yet, then harness all of your power and creativity to create one. You are just as much a part of human nature as everyone else. If we want to live in a better world, but see others that are not acting in a way that is aligned with their highest selves, that’s even more of a reason for us to step up and lead by example. Consider this: you have just as much potential to alter reality as anyone who has ever lived. Look within. You are a sleeping giant. See the tidal wave of potential you have to create something spectacular in the world. Right now, there are people out there who are desperately looking for someone to give them hope; to help them believe again. You can be that person.
One time, I walked onto a semi-crowded New York City train, and called out to gain everyone’s attention. Naturally, most people were disinterested and looking away; because in their paradigm of reality, the only people on the subway who call out to others are trying to take value, not give value. I was intent on rattling the foundations of that type of scarcity-based belief system. As such, I immediately informed the group that I was not there to ask for money, and that I was not there to try to convert them to some type of formal religion. I told them that instead, I wanted to change things up a bit, and start a new trend on the subway based around giving. I pulled out a Metrocard from my pocket that was worth $104, good for a free month of unlimited subway rides, and offered it up for grabs to anyone who wanted it. To my surprise, at first, no one responded. It seemed almost as if they believed it was too good to be true; as if there was no way someone would just be giving something like that away for free with no strings attached. A bit startled, I chuckled and said: “No one? No one wants a free unlimited Metrocard? It’s brand new, still enclosed in the wrapper.” At that point, two women (who seemed to be friends) looked at each other, and one of them said: “I’ll take it.” After I handed it over to her, the train was coming to a stop. As I headed towards the door, waiting to exit, I began to feel the overall demeanor shift from one of apathy and skepticism to one of awe and disbelief. A few people began talking to one another, trying to comprehend what they just saw. “Did that really just happen?” said one woman. Another just said: “Wow.” I walked off of that train feeling like a million bucks. Of the 100 or so people who randomly happened to be in that train car at the time, it is my hope that this act gave someone an exciting story to talk about with their loved ones when they got home that day. With all of the messages of fear and hatred blasting out towards us from so many different directions, perhaps it’s time for us to take it upon ourselves to begin to change the storylines. We are the ones creating the stories that shape the culture of planet earth.
Many times, the thing that can stop us from making progress in becoming more generous with our time and resources towards others is the mental construct we create in our minds about the world. We often act as if we are stuck in the proverbial traffic jam as if it’s something completely separate from us, but the truth is that we are the traffic. It’s like a chicken and egg game. We cannot expect the world to first become utopian before we begin to believe and act accordingly. That is backwards. That would be the equivalent of believing that a street will never be clean, because others will never stop littering, and littering ourselves as a result out of apathy. In that scenario, our littering and apathy would be no less of an issue than anyone else’s. As a matter of fact, the mindset that causes us to act that way is the very problem. Sadly, if we think that way, we become the cause of the very thing we don’t want to see. Our own littering is what contributes to creating dirty streets. On the other hand, we can stop throwing trash on the ground. If we wanted to go a step further, we could grab a garbage bag, and begin cleaning up. If we wanted to go yet another step further, we could organize a crew of likeminded people to do shifts every week, to ensure it was always nearly 100% clean. And if we really, really wanted it to happen, we could sleep out on the street with a sign that said: “I will sleep here until everyone on this street stops littering.” We are far more capable than we give ourselves credit for. Before any new paradigm can ever permeate the world, the believing and taking action steps must always come first, because those are precisely what make it possible.
When we look around the world we live in today, there are so many things that should be, for all intensive purposes, statistically impossible. The chances of every single one of our ancestors surviving long enough to pair up and give birth -- leading all the way down to us being alive at this point -- should be impossible. Open-heart surgery and artificial limb replacement should be impossible. Sending radio waves through the air and sending people to outer space should be impossible. It should be impossible for over 300,000 people to be able to live on one small island in Iceland, and all peacefully coexist for time periods that stretch beyond a full year without even one murder taking place. And yet, despite all odds, humanity has shown that we are fully capable of making all of these things possible.
Though we’ve all likely had the concept of maximizing our own wealth at all costs (towards infinity) beaten into our minds over the years, I’d like to look at this idea from a different angle that you may have never considered before. Here’s a hypothetical question: How much money would be too much for you to ever want to have? For example: If you were to make a list of everything you’ve ever wanted to buy for the rest of your life -- for yourself, for your family, and for your friends -- and add it all up -- what is the number that is $1 above this amount? At what point would you say: “I have enough. I’m done. The concept of earning more money is no longer useful or necessary for me to satisfy any of my needs.” This scenario probably seems so foreign that it may be hard to even visualize it, but doing so can be extremely beneficial. Everyone has some limit. Some will be much higher than others; but eventually, with an unlimited checkbook, there is a level at which consumption for co
nsumption’s sake would inevitably begin to feel empty and boring.
Let’s keep going with this idea of getting everything you’ve ever wanted, even beyond just the monetary aspect. After every mean kid from grade school apologized and admitted that they were wrong for underestimating you, after every goal is accomplished, after every chip on your shoulder was removed, and statues were created in your image -- what would you do next? What would be left to strive for? What goals would be left to achieve after you’d already collected every single one that was meaningful to you?
If you ever got to that level -- beyond money, beyond consumption, beyond personal achievements, beyond ego, beyond having to prove anything to anyone -- how would you derive meaning and joy out of life?
The reason why I ask is because this visualization can become like a video game cheat code for your life; allowing you to skip a bunch of intermediate levels that you truly have no interest in playing. While you’re stressed out and feeling worthless because you’ve yet to achieve some high mark that you’ve set for yourself, it’s possible to realize that even if you did achieve it, there would be a point afterward whereby that achievement would no longer even be that important to you. After it was over, you would wake up one day realizing that you’re still the same person who breathes air, eats food, and puts their pants on one leg at a time. No matter how grand the goal, eventually it too would pass, and become old news. So, when you reach that maximum limit, when you have that excess money that still sits on top of everything you’ve ever desired -- more than you could ever imagine -- what would you decide to do with it? If spending it on things for yourself no longer made you happy, if hoarding it no longer made you happy --what would you do with it?
You could spend it on other people in need. You could give them experiences of liberation that they’ve never had before. You could feel fulfilled just from witnessing them go through it for the first time, and be reminded of what it felt like going through it for the first time yourself; bonding you closer together, and knowing that your actions made it possible. You could focus completely on making people laugh and feel joy; you could relieve pain and stress; you could help them discover new levels of freedom. You could use your greatest core attributes to move people’s emotions. It’s similar to the act of bringing a young child to the amusement park for the first time. Though you’ve already experienced all of the rides, and may have moved beyond the stage where you feel the need to ride them anymore, you can now gain pure enjoyment just from watching their face light up as they get their moment in the sun. And since these acts are so pure, and stem from the core of what makes you who you really are, they can never run out.
This is the endgame. In the longest of long runs, it’s where we’re all headed. And the great news is that once we truly understand this, we can sidestep all of the intermediate phases of needing to prove something to feel complete. It’s there right now. Deep down, the main reason why we purchase most luxury items is because we love the perceived respect and recognition we get when we can show others that we have acquired them. But -- if we instead use those same resources we have in an effort to give something of true value away to someone else who needs it even more than we do, we may find that we get even more of the respect and recognition that we were seeking. When we start doing things this way, we can discover that the joy and purity of performing the act alone is more than enough reason to do it, and the recognition doesn’t really matter as much. A sense of true purpose, a life mission, can replace the old self which once upon a time yearned so strongly for a much more shallow level of acceptance. And surprisingly, through this process, we can finally discover what it truly means to love and accept ourselves. This is the next step in our evolution as human beings. I don’t know if it’s possible to make one hundred other people smile without also feeling happy ourselves. Through the process of helping others, in turn, we end up helping ourselves as well.
13
Moving Towards the Future
What was the greatest party or music festival you’ve ever been to? Have you ever been to an event in which you felt completely immersed in positivity? Have you ever been out on a dance floor with a bunch of strangers – fully engaged with the music – and realized that in that very moment, all seemed right in the world? It didn’t matter what each person’s skin color was, what their religious beliefs were, or what political party they believed in; all that mattered was that you were all there enjoying the atmosphere together. Like many others, I personally love going to events like these, because they serve as important reminders; giving us a preview of what type of world is possible when everyone has all of their needs met. They have shown me that people who have their physical and psychological needs met don’t have any reason to want to drag others down; and instead want to lift them up.
With an atmosphere that electrifying, we can realize what’s really important in life. Why not try to create lifestyles in which we can maintain this positive mindset and genuine way of existence as often as possible? Isn’t this what we’re all really seeking? Knowing that this is possible, why would anyone want to waste their time with hatred and oppression? Why would anyone even want to hold on to billions dollars, when they could instead use it to meet even more people’s needs – allowing them to join the party too?
Think hypothetically, and suspend your judgment for a moment: Imagine that we were to create the world’s biggest festival; big enough to be capable of including over seven billion people, and taking place in every city around the world at the same time. Imagine that it wasn’t just a one-day or one-weekend event, but something ongoing that never ended. Imagine that everyone’s basic needs for food, water, clothing, shelter, energy, and sanitation were met through technological automation, and so no one ever had to leave this party unless they wanted to. Just for reference, let’s give this festival a name: The Forever Love Life Festival. Imagine the freedom and happiness that would arise from living in this way. People would be completely free to self-actualize, discover their greatest strengths, and contribute value to others in a way that feels natural to them. If we were able to create a way to ensure that everyone had a place to live without fear of getting evicted, and had enough to eat without fear of starvation, how much less likely would we all be to work for companies that hurt people? How much less likely would we be to do unethical things that go against what we feel deep down is best for the greater good? How much less likely would we be to destroy the earth, angrily lash out at others, or feel the need to fight wars and kill our fellow humans for natural resources or political reasons? When we come from a place of scarcity -- the lack of basic resources needed to survive, the lack of love and acceptance, the lack of freedom to speak our minds and be who we naturally are -- we become so hyper-focused on meeting our own needs that we don’t stop and think about the negative impacts we may be creating for others in the attempt to get them.
Alternatively, when we do have all of our needs met, we don’t have any reason or desire to bring negativity into the world. When we feel completely fulfilled, all we want to do is pull others up and share that experience. There is a common proverb that says: “misery loves company.” I believe that the opposite is also true: positivity loves company as well. The main issue is that we tend to ignore these concepts when we attempt to solve our large-scale problems. The miserable and the blissful people are all part of the same world. We’re all in this together, and our destinies are intertwined. We can’t just ignore the problems of those who don’t have their needs met, or try to restrain them, or try to build fences to keep them away, hoping that the problems go away on their own; because it often comes back to hurt us all in the end. As Martin Luther King Jr. said: “A riot is the language of the unheard.” Rather than trying to suppress the concerns of the unheard, a better approach is to actually listen to what they have to say, discover what they want and what they need, and work together alongside them to find a way to meet their needs. This is a much more effective strategy to elimina
te problems in the long run, and create a better future for us all.
Right now, for the purposes of problem solving, a large chunk of our resources are being spent very inefficiently. Rather than focusing primarily on crisis prevention and damage control, we should begin to shift our focus towards empowering those in need. This methodology serves to minimize the number of crises that happen in the first place, and eliminates problems before they happen. An empowered person who is capable of meeting their own needs is extremely unlikely to attack others, because they don’t have any reason or desire to. Think about how much time, how much money, and how much of our collective physical and mental resources we allot towards trying to prevent violence and lawlessness from spreading. We spend so much money on prisons to punish those who break the laws, so much on security to spy and search people, and so much on weaponry and military spending. Obviously, in the world we live in today, there certainly are needs for prisons, and security, and military. Yes, we do need to defend ourselves, and we do need to create consequences for people who infringe upon other people’s freedoms. But we’ve become so heavily invested in these measures and so eager to engage in instant knee-jerk reactions to incidents that we rarely dig deeper to discover the true root of what actually causes these problems.
Our reactivity and paranoia has caused us to go completely overboard with this security-centric type of spending. For example, even though an argument can be made that having nuclear weapons is necessary for defense purposes right now, is there any legitimate reason for any country to ever need to have 5,000, 10,000, or 30,000 of them? Let’s be honest with ourselves. Does that really make a country any safer than only having 4,000, or 3,000, or 2,000? Having 300 nukes is already more than enough to demolish the capital city of every country in the world. If it ever got to the point where a country was involved in a conflict in which they had to use more than 300 nukes, it would be way beyond the point of realistically using the other nukes as leverage to scare others in order to prevent them from attacking. How many planets are we trying to blow up, exactly? Do we need this many bombs just in case we go to war with Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn as well?
It's All My Fault: How I Messed Up the World, and Why I Need Your Help to Fix It Page 15
