Letter From the Future for Martin Keo book, pub tbd

Dear Reader,
I was musing on what to write for this essay when an email came in with the subject, “Letter from Vicki, 2030.” No, it’s not a hoax. I opened it and now offer it to you as better than anything I might write in 2008. I hope you find it as heartening as I did.
Vicki Robin
Langley, WA March 2008


Dear Vicki,
Hello from 2030 from your 85-year-old-self (yes, we still have our teeth and still dance). We just got the inter-time communications system up and running and every one of us alive gets to write one free letter to our younger self. There are so many restrictions on what we can say. I can’t tell you exactly what is happening. I can’t try to “change history.” You can’t write me back. Rules! As you can see, anal bureaucrats are still with us, but I understand their reasoning. We’ve made it into a very decent future but had to cross quite a desert to get here. Out of pure love we’d all like to spare you the suffering and change the past, but the GWC (Global Wisdom Council) says that if we eliminate the stripping away we might damage the peace we’ve made with living here.

Even though I can’t steer you (as if you would ever let anyone do that!) I can shine a light on the choices you are already making -- sort of like, “Nudge nudge, hint hint, step there.” I can’t tell you about the stunning innovations and twists of fate that got us to quite a grand 2030. I can only talk to you about what you already know. Don’t ask around to see if anyone you know got a similar email. A lot of them just didn’t make it into the future and they’ll feel bad knowing that. Of course, by getting this you know that you, my dear, will survive another 22 years. After this, lord knows what will happen to “us.”

If you are about to hit delete, thinking this is a hoax, please at least read this quick and dirty key to your future: less, local and love. Use less, live local and love other people, because they are what sees you through.

Hint One: Save – and make - energy
You made a good choice in 2008 to do an Airplane Fast and not fly for a year. The irony of flying around the world to lecture people on sustainable living finally got to you. You learned to travel electronically while letting your body stay more still. From that you started to belong where you are and, as you’ll see later, community is what the future is all about. I think now of the David Waggoner lines “Stand still. The trees ahead and the bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here.” Here, though, is now everywhere as well. The web is humming on levels you can’t imagine and frankly there’s been a big sigh of relief that air transport is constrained for… well, I can’t say. Think of the innovations in the last five years – YouTube, Wikis, Blogs, Webcams. Consider Moore’s Law (computing power doubles every 18 months). Add the intuitive capacities you’ve seen in young children – and yourself. And contemplate what “here” might mean to me. Planes to use seem like jalopies.

While staying home, you’d also do well to follow those impulses to make home more energy efficient. Hint, don’t buy any more lamps for screw-in bulbs; more efficient lighting is coming soon. Hint, just drive your 50-mpg Honda Insight until it dies; you’ll be amazed what’s next in mob-tech (that’s mobility technology). Here I just have to bite my tongue. I’ll just say that if someone we know invests in some Wind Farm Venture on her island or in some Solar Installation business she might be set for life. It used to be location location location. Now It’s local local local. By staying home you will see many opportunities to retrofit home for a Post-Peak-Oil future. You’ll also find yourself getting political, because shared solutions for energy are better than just putting solar hot water on your roof – as you will anyway.

Hint Two: Grow food
We’ve now studied the behavior of our species in transition and have discovered that a spike in “lawns to lunch” (home garden acreage) is a leading indicator of impending resource constraints. The future casts a shadow for those who pay attention to the horizon, and when people hanker after land and gardening like they used to hanker after opera and travel, you know a shift is coming. Follow all your impulses to grow food, to organize local food systems, to sidle up to neighbors with lawns and suggest you could find a young farmer who’d love to turn that useless mono-crop of grass into breakfast, lunch and dinner. Save seeds. Go ahead, if you want, and buy land to grow food, but frankly you have a talent for growing kale and zucchini – and not much else. Support CSAs. Partner with other singles to do a share. You’ve been thinking about raising chickens. All I’ll say is, “Not a bad idea.” Or join that goat coop, take that cheese-making class and buy up all the used canning jars at the thrift store. Think food. Dream food. Do food. Eat food (but less).

Hint Three: Make peace with your past – and future
I’m not going to kid you. Some really hard knocks are coming. Some are just as you imagine, others are not. A way of life based on treating finite resources as infinite is ending, and we are still living with the shocks and aftershocks of it. We were slow to move on the mandate of 80% reduction of carbon by 2050 and are reaping the consequences. Yes, there have been environmental catastrophes (but there have also been “benestrophes” – unexpected accumulations of good). Yes, many have died; some at their own hands, since living within the means of the planet didn’t seem like living at all. Be prepared to live through this, knowing that in the larger scheme of thing - and nature - it’s quite natural for populations to overshoot and collapse. Death itself isn’t as tragic as living in fear of death and allowing suspicion and greed to flourish in your mind. Cultivate a calm and caring attitude, even while you rail inside against it all (I can guarantee you’ll rail, weep, get mad… you’re human). Making peace now with the future means accepting now the many losses that will come, so that you won’t be in shock and useless. Be like the musicians on the Titanic. Create beauty, because those who will die and those who survive both need that. Clearly, since I’m writing, you and others survive – actually, life is grand. Making peace with the future also means that you will roll with the good stuff ahead as well.

So here’s some things you’re doing that I’d suggest you keep doing:
Your practice of frugality – getting the maximum pleasure out of every morsel consumed – puts you in a good position to welcome limits as sanity, not deprivation, and to surf the waves of change. Keep teaching your “high joy-to-stuff” strategies. A lot of people listen to you. Give them something real to chew on.
There is nothing wrong in your past – it’s all useful. Appreciate everything you’ve done and see what good can come of it. That goes for your relationships, of course - but I also mean (and I can’t say too much about it) the whole exuberance of the oil-enabled industrial growth model. Stay open to the good in every technology and every innovation because they may be precursors of the future light-structures. Question your assumptions, abandon your Luddite tendencies and ask about everything, “What’s good about you that brought you into being?”
Joe Dominguez used to point out to us (you and me… funny to talk with you this way) that when there was 25% unemployment in the 1930’s Depression, 75% of the people were employed. In other words, use your bright mind to see the opportunities in obstacles. In fact, the future is friendly to people who evolve and evolution tends to favor the braver – those willing to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Pay attention to what is being born, even as you tenderly allow all that is passing away to go.
The future will also be friendly to those who shift from “me” to “we.” Be an opportunist – but on behalf of your community. Which brings me to…

Hint Four: Treat everyone within 50 miles like you love them.
You will need them as your friends. They are the raw materials of a sane future, if you want to be purely pragmatic. They are also your brain; alone you’ll never know enough to survive, but within 50 miles of home is all the intelligence and information you’ll need. If you’re friendly and generous these neighbors will come to trust you. Of course friendliness actually takes guts – not the guts it takes to protest (which you will still do for years), but the guts it takes to risk rejection, care first, forgive, apologize, ask before you attack. In other words, loving the ones you’re with requires tolerance, acceptance and letting go of selfishness. I might also point out that among the 3 million people within 50 miles of you now are probably every friend, lover, dance partner, big thinker or young person you’ll ever need. Go find them. Trade with them. Network with them. Play with them. Help them through hard times. Share meals and homes. Call them to see how their interview or operation went. Ask them to coach you in reaching for your dreams. Even though they aren’t “exotic”, they’re actually interesting, remarkable, smart, kind and skilled. Every one a gem.

Pay attention to “co” words. They are the future. Cooperation. Communion. Community. Collaboration. Communication. Your Conversation Cafes don’t quite fit the word pattern but they are important for people to practice and learn all the other “co” words. Console will also be needed.

Do all you can in pairs and teams. Do work parties and cleaning parties and shedding stuff parties and investing clubs and buying groups and service groups. The era of the Lone Ranger and the Great Hero is passing. Build community. “If you invite them they will come.” Alone you are brittle. Together you are supple.

Hint Five: Pack your personal ark
Just as airlines have a baggage weight limit, to cross the great ocean of time and catastrophe into the future you’ll need to pack carefully. What of your current life must you have in a future governed by “less, local and love?” I can’t tell you what’s coming but I can say this: Scenario A is that you muddle through and your daily life doesn’t change that much in 25 years. The rich get richer and the poor poorer, but life goes on. Scenario B is that catastrophes (and “benestrophes” – overwhelmingly good things) do come. Your weather does change, the seas do rise, energy shortages do occur and the dollar isn’t what it used to be. Select what you want for either case. If it’s A, well, you’ll have the things you need and have shed of a lot of excess baggage. If B, you’ll have the things you need – and need them. Here are some categories to consider:
Seeds: heirloom, open pollinated
Books: reference, how-to and inspirational
Tools: to build things, fix things, make things (good girl, you got a treadle sewing machine in 2007), study things, kill things (a rifle, butcher knife and fishing pole), roll things (wheels save your back and feet)
Clothes: warm, durable, layers, good shoes, glitter for parties
Furniture: durable, comfortable, multi-purpose
Household: durable. Really useful things with cords are okay (we’ve never been without that blender), but hand tools will be needed… like wire whisks and wooden spoons and good chopping knives.
Health care: stock up on and freeze must-have prescription drugs, buy basic medical books. You’ll be surprised at how little you pop in your mouth is still needed. Remember what Norman Cousins said, “85% of all illness is self-limiting,” - and for the rest, I’d say that painkillers and antibiotics are heaven’s gift to the creaky.
Beauty: brushes and combs. Keep all those scarves and earrings (and a coupla lipsticks) to feel pretty, which is water for the soul.
Energy: batteries, yes - but everyone should have one back-up solar panel and/or hand- crank generator for communications technology. Get a solar cooker. Insulate whatever you live in. Double-pane windows. Use the last hours of ancient sunlight (Thom Hartmann’s name for oil) to create a low-energy environment for the future.

You get the drift. Buy and keep what will last. Buy and keep what has multiple uses (like a knife and pot rather than a Cuisinart and electric rice cooker). You’re not packing a real Conestoga Wagon so you can keep everything you have now if you want. Remember your old Your Money or Your Life idea of enoughness? Not just survival. Not just adequate. Truly rich in everything from basics to luxuries, but nothing in excess. Shed the surplus early and often. Scenarios A and B both favor living lightly.

Hint Six: Make yourself useful
Head’s up. A local future belongs to the person who makes herself truly useful to real people, not to the one who can market some useless gadget to unsuspecting consumers. You’ll find it hard to trade your knack for inspiring others for bicycle repair, but don’t worry. If you can make people laugh, you’ll always be taken care of. Hone all people skills (see Hint Four above). The future needs facilitators, negotiators, re-framers, therapists, counselors – anyone with patience in the face of human suffering. The future also needs: handymen, emergency management specialists, nurses, gardeners, inventers, record keepers, geeks and techies of every ilk, musicians, athletes, mechanics, engineers, cooks, team players, canning, inventers, teachers, midwives, writers, body workers, artists, project managers, inventers, story tellers, hunters and fishermen, builders, farmers, inventers, designers of every sort imaginable, healers of every sort imaginable, pathologists, emergency medical technicians, inventers. There’s no lack of good work here in the future.


I do hope this all gets through. The censors may zap anything I say that gives you too much information. But here’s what I can tell you about now. The birds are singing. The children are healthy. They don’t blame us for our mistakes – we now know for certain that our generation did our best with what we had and what we knew. This new generation understands that blame is toxic and they simply don’t do it. It makes them seem like angels, really. They know they are making the future – and that’s what gives meaning to life. They are actually watching over you now. Yes, we in the future travel in time to care for you. We do our best to help without interfering. You are loved. All of you. Have courage. Keep going. It’s working out.

Vicki

Talks and Teleclasses

I'm excited again about teaching. The new content is based in the Your Money or Your Life approach (a transformational systems perspective on resource flow... to be brief and obscure) but reflects the wisdom of years (five years and lots of challenge and change). Here's the current assortment but be sure to check www.yourmoneyoryourlife.info for the latest.

• September 1 – Sounds True releases Vicki’s new 2-CD set, a fresh expression of Your Money or Your Life.
  
  
• September 23 – Money in the ecology of transformation — California Institute of Integral Studies, 1453 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, 7-9 PM
  
  
• September 24 - Transition – but how?; Insights and Advice from seasoned sustainability activist, Vicki Robin, Petaluma Community Center, 320 North McDowell Blvd, Petaluma, CA 94954, k.rajala@golocal.coop. 7-9 PM
  
  
• September 30 – Your Money or Your Life, Bellevue Regional Library, 1111 110th Ave N, Bellevue, WA, 7-9 PM
  
  
• October 1 – Your Money or Your Life, Covington Library, 27100 164th Ave SE, Covington, WA, 7-9 PM
  
  
• October 20-22 – attend Vicki and Monique’s 3-day workshop near Toronto at Sugar Ridge Retreat Center.

⇒ Join Vicki’s new tele-class based on Your Money or Your Life.

Two Free Introductory Classes:

Tuesday September 15 at 5:15PM Pacific Time. Click here to save your “seat”

Saturday September 19 at 8:00 AM Pacific Time. Click here to save your “seat”

About turning 64

I forgot to include whoever reads this blog in my reflections about turning 64 on July 6. Here's the email essay:

Hello friends,

I’m popping in to reflect with you a little about my turning 64 soon (not what I thought it would be when I was 24), and to say there’s room still at my June 12-14 Rowe, MA workshop, Living a Life you Love with the Money you Have. These two topics actually fit together – read on, hang in and you’ll see how.

Yes I am turning 64 in a month, but not in the Beatles way. I’m not losing my hair. I can feed myself. My travels take me more places than a cottage on the Isle of Wight. Yes I’m handy mending fuses and gardening… but also singing, dancing, doing improv theater and serving up lectures about money AND life. I know that having lasted to 64, I’m statistically likely to have another 15 or 20 years in me, barring any more cancer. I know that as an educated Boomer I’ve had one of the most privileged lives of any human of all time – that generations after me may not have as much stuff or as long a life or as strong a sense that the world is their oyster.

I wake up every day saying “Life is good” just because it is. I have plenty of what every social scientist says makes life good: friends and relations, community, health, beautiful surroundings, useful work to do, and enough provisions to feel secure.

So with all this privilege and good fortune, with a truly long and happy life behind me and perhaps another 20 years ahead, what’s next? Two generations ago “next” at 64 was decline and death, with maybe a little dementia phase thrown in. But my cohort has all our wits about us and even if Social Security didn’t seem like a mirage and even if their investments hadn’t dropped 30% most of my friends would not be “retiring”. We’re not getting a Lazy-Boy and TV clicker and calling it quits on active life. We’re not abandoning productive work. Maybe they called these “the golden years” because the Boomers cleverly took all the gold and are leaving the dross to future generations – but my pals are not like that.

True, we actually don’t have the energy, drive or knees of 30 year-olds which takes some adjustment. True I’ve had to say good bye to a wasp waist and a swan neck. But there’s a secret about getting older that I’m just getting the hang of. Letting go gets sweeter and sweeter. The wisdom I struggled to attain in my 30s seems available without struggle now. The ego that stuck to me like fly paper in my 30s has lost a lot of its glue. When I seek understanding, I have enough adversity and achievement behind me to make an educated guess at truth. I know I don’t have forever, and that gives focus and sobriety to my days, but also more real joy.

As many of you know, I’ve just passed my 5-years-since-diagnosis marker. When I hit the cancer wall five years ago, the outward expanding trajectory of my life did a U turn and I headed within to heal and change. I’m now well and well established in a new life so ready or not, the cocoon is opening. The book tour for the reissue of Your Money or Your Life showed me that my public speaking chops still work. Maybe in one of my surgeries my funny bone got directly hooked to my jawbone because my audiences and I laughed our heads off. Here’s what an attendee in Atlanta said:

Vicki, your talk last night was brilliant; we have not had so much fun in years and any speaker who can teach “money lessons” in the midst of the current economic woes AND have her audience laughing deserves praise – and attention!

Laughter actually seems as crucial as thrift to making it through these times. It is also crucial to me. If I have about 7000 days left, I do want to enjoy every minute, whether watching the sunset or fielding questions from people at a lecture.

Not only are my Your Money or Your Life presentations funnier, they dare to go deeper than ever before, organizing themselves around three core questions rather than nine practical steps. I love engaging with these questions. They are simple yet endless, short but revealing more aspects of the truth over time.

1. What is money – really? I digging down to see what’s behind our irrational money behavior. We discover our money personalities and fixations. The cultural norms and messages that will not bend easily to new insights. The structures of the money, banking and financial systems that are rooted in a fundamental insanity – that we can sustain growth on a finite planet. Cracking this open liberates us to reshape our money lives and also to defrock the Emperor Money so he has less power over us, our children and the natural world.

2. How much is enough – really? While the question sounds like a rebuke for excess it really is an invitation to choose from a core of satisfaction rather than a state of distraction. Enough isn’t really a limit. It’s an alive relationship with the world of form, both shaping it and being shaped by it. It’s a place of intimacy with reality.

3. What makes us happy – really? The Dalai Lama has made it safe for the Puritans in us all to say that the purpose of life is to be happy. Content. Satisfied. Peaceful. The search for happiness can shift from self-indulgence to self inquiry. Really, in the presence of what have I experienced deep and lasting joy? How can I direct all of my life energy towards that aliveness and have my financial life support rather than abort this lightness of being?

These are the questions I hope to raise as I travel and speak, and to approach them both inspirationally and practically so we can be free of confusion and empowered to pursue our passions unencumbered by the bear traps and booby prizes our culture sets on our course to direct us to open our wallets and shut our mouths. I’d be happy to bring all of this – spirit and message both – to groups and communities and universities and conferences. My shingle is once more out.

So there you have my take on 64 – at least how I am as I inch up on it. In celebration a group of friends is going to march with me in the 4th of July parade to the squeezebox playing “When I’m 64”. We’re costuming up to show what we each think getting older, wiser or more foolish looks like. If you can’t be there, send me a word picture of what 64 is to you. Or as the Bards say:

Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, (NOT) Wasting Away.

Now you can see how 64 and the Rowe workshop next weekend fit together. Rowe is my first post book tour teaching opportunity. Monique Tilford, my coauthor, and I are going to give it our all. I hope the Universe gets that I’ve changed my order from “leave me alone, I’m sick” to “Howdy.” If you are in the vicinity of Western MA and can come over, great! Rowe is simply a beautiful place to spend a weekend eating good food and meeting great people. If not, please do send this on to friends and support us in launching a new season of enlivening people with our words.

Love to all

Vicki

FYI

Beatles When I'm 64 Lyrics:

When I get older, losing my hair,
Many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a Valentine
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?

If I'd been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?

oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oooo
You'll be older too, (ah ah ah ah ah)
And if you say the word,
I could stay with you.

I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings, go for a ride.

Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?

Every summer we can rent a cottage
In the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee:
Vera, Chuck, and Dave

Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, Wasting Away.

Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?

Whoo!