How much of your time is dedicated to the life of sustainable community? How much of your time is given to caring for the earth or cultivating relationships that will make a difference for generations to come?

This is a big question as I have heard so many times that there is just too much to do or too many taps on the limited time that we have. I really think it comes down to what we value. Some would put a dollar amount on their time as their income is based on how much money they can make per-hour. They would rather just write a check then commit a couple hours to volunteer. While this helps in a financial sense, it doesn’t help too much in a relational sense.

I could never be where I am today if I had worked full time for the last four years. I’m not sure if I could even do it at this point. Then again, all that I do is work, life, play… its all time committed to one vision – building the Village. I had a conversation with a friend yesterday as she is wrestling with starting full-time work. What if we could build a value structure into our country, maybe just our city, where people didn’t feel the need to work full time jobs?

We could do it… it would mean a major shift in lifestyle, but we would have so much more time to share with each other, so much more time to cultivate and grow our own food sources. Gone would be the frantic rush from home to work to home to work. Gone would be the meaningless stockpiling of money to use on the self-centric pursuit of happiness. Maybe our lives would slow down a bit and we could eliminate “business” from our vocabulary.