Reflection by Edgar Cahn
3,000 pounds of citrus. What you see is abundance. What you may not see is collective power, relationships and choice. What is less visible but actually tangible is the way in which a shared activity creates a kind of friendliness and memory of a joint effort that suspends or transcends any sense of isolation or powerlessness.
A shared activity produces more than itself. It seeds a collective sense of power: we can do – and a presumption of willingness to be there for each other for future undertakings. When that becomes explicit, when we become aware of it, a new power emerges to shape the future, to make a difference in the lives of others, to ask “what next” and to have the power to say: We decide what’s next and we can imagine possibilities that did not previously exist.
TimeBanking seeks to turn transactions into relationships and out of any gathering or any collective effort the possibility of an ongoing, unfolding of purpose that advances well-being. But it does more if we ask what this might mean. Could it represent a collective and shared statement of possibility, of the capacity to imagine a different future where individually and collectively, we become the architects of the future. That’s not such a bad byproduct of harvesting one grape fruit plus one grapefruit plus one grapefruit. As George Bernard Shaw observed, it converts Why? To Why Not?