Community of Excellence and Wealth

What is it that we leave to posterity? In a word - wealth. In all its forms, for there are more forms of wealth than just money, wealth must be used for it to qualify as wealth. When I say used I mean invested. Put to work.

Cash sitting in a mattress only makes for a lumpy mattress and trouble sleeping. But cash invested into efforts that give others opportunities to increase what our community produces increases our overall monetary wealth. So that we then have more money to invest and this cycles us to greater and greater results - what we call Excellence!

But I mentioned other forms of wealth? Perhaps a wealth of knowledge. I have learned things over the course of my life. Some from other people and some from my own experiences. If I invest this knowledge in the minds of others, my children,say, then they have a larger base of knowledge to start building a more excellent life for themselves and their children. Cycling the community to greater and greater knowledge. But what if they go beyond just their children? Expanding their knowledge to a greater community widens the cycles to greater and greater interaction. Even more excellence! (Hats off to Marcus Aurelius and the others who understood and passed on the value of this.)

Now consider a wealth of passion. Emotional energy to make the effort meaningful and sincere. When the passion is positive in nature we incorporate a purity to what we do. For the love of music, of art, of writing, of science, of teaching, etc. My love of writing has shown itself to be radioactive in that I sense those who are exposed to it start to talk about their own passions. Unfortunately, we do have the capability to bury our passion in a grave of 'shoulds' - but thankfully we can never eradicate it from our hearts completely. Working at our passions raises those actions to artistry, far, far more fulfilling then a 'should.' Illuminating others with the light of our own passion can ignite their passions thereby raising the meaningfulness of our communities' actions. Another level of Excellence.

Rarer in our conversations has been a consideration for a wealth of spirituality. Seemingly, this is a province usually left to a certain elite few: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mandela, as examples. I propose that we are overlooking so much shared spirituality that we minimize its impact in our lives and the lives of others. These three great men I listed shared something, they each led a struggle against institutionalized evil. The authority of their lands ruled by maintaining injustice, forgetting that governors rule at the behest of the governed. But most of our everyday lives aren't pitted against such extreme evil. Our spirituality seems diffused and perhaps unnecessary. But if you consider it as the root basis for all that we do, how we judge all that others do, and to determined how, when, where, who, and most certainly why we interact with others then we will see that its influence is inescapable. A commitment by us all to do right and do good when we do anything will help spread that goodness to all edges of our communities. Indeed Excellence.

What could be easier than to offer those aspects of ourselves that come so naturally? Oddly, it seems that the first things we dismiss when forging a future for ourselves are those characteristics that most make us who we are: one's soul, heart, mind, and body. This raises the question, how valuable is what we are truly leaving behind?