As I was driving home from work the other day, I was musing that I really do have one of the most wonderful commutes on the planet.
I work out of Daajing Giids but commute to and from Tlell daily. The drive (as you all know) snakes along the east coast of Graham Island, offering scenes of beautiful beaches, myriad blue-streaked ocean currents and all sorts of wildlife (either roadside, skyside or asphalted).
All this, with relatively little traffic compared to anywhere else in the world.
And as I was enjoying the view I felt, for maybe the first time in my life, truly wealthy.
I’m not a rich person, at least not by financial standards. Literally, the number of dollars in my account and the number of cookies I ate last night are eerily similar.
But it dawned on me that that’s not what real wealth is.
Deep down, we all know material wealth is not the key to inner peace. And we know that because it’s hammered home to us in so many fables and stories.
You won’t find many Hollywood movies that champion a life of amassing wealth and fortune as a way to deeper life understanding. (Unlike advertising, which seems to only send the message, “the more you have, the happier you will be”).
But what we know and what we do can often be out of sync. So it’s sometimes good to reset.
Thinking about it caused me to arrive at these conclusions:
- Intelligence is recognizing the difference between what we “want” vs what we “need.”
- Wisdom is knowing the difference between what we “want” and what we need.”
- Wealth is having what we need.
- Inner peace is only needing what we have.
The other thing that occurred to me about wealth, is that wealth is meaningless if it isn’t shared. Which essentially means that unless your whole community is wealthy (as described by point number three), no one person can be truly wealthy.
It was while I was meditating on these points that I concluded we have the capacity to have a truly wealthy community on Haida Gwaii.
Never have I lived in a place that rivals Haida Gwaii in its ability to satisfy our most primal needs. Those primal needs are, of course, shelter, water, food and community.
Community can be described as a place but also as a feeling. A community is not necessarily just a group of people with whom you live, but more accurately a place where you can feel safe and accepted. A home. A community could be the people who surround you, but it could also just mean yourself – free from persecution and judgment.
When I try to visualize my perfect life, or to put it another way, when I try to realize my retirement, what I see is having a place to live that I know I won’t get kicked out of, having enough water and food, and being among people who also have what they need so they won’t end up trying to steal it from me.
The more we work together on Haida Gwaii the wealthier we will all be. The more we accept and welcome our neighbors without judging them, the wealthier we will all be.
The more we help those around us and praise their efforts instead of persecuting them and being suspicious of their successes, the wealthier we all will be.
And I will be able to have a nice retirement after all.