Listening to the news stories and learning about the very scary and sad situation so many Americans find themselves in, without work or ways to support the lives they have always known; and considering the solutions that are being sought, such as encouraging 6th graders to decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives so that they can begin training to make a decent livelihood, I wonder. I do not pretend to know anything about money or economics, that is not my area, but I have made a life-long study of human nature. What if, as Buckminster Fuller used to put it, instead of trying to make “cents”, we focus on what makes sense? Making sense, to Bucky, was to endeavor to discover what one person can do that will benefit the largest number of people, rather than just themselves or their families. To me that means discovering the thinking of the heart, rather than that of the head. Maybe thinking with the head is what has gotten us into this mess, and as Einstein says, “You can’t solve a problem at the same level of thinking that produced the problem.”

What if the 6th graders were asked to pay more attention to what is happening in their hearts? What is it that they feel called to do? What do they have a passion for? What will keep them inspired? What can they do that will make a difference in their communities? What can they do that will offer something of value – not just monetary value – to the world itself?

What if prosperity follows that rule instead of the rules involved in chasing a dollar? Our system is collapsing, maybe it is a good time to deeply re-evaluate the paradigm and assumptions under which we have been operating.