What if MONEY is a thread we can use to mend what is broken?
“The way my cashier held my money today. He used two hands to carefully pass me my bills with a slight bow. It reminded me of a college professor’s instruction on the tea ceremony where he urged me to treat light objects as heavy and heavy objects as light. The cashier’s handling of bills brought a gravity to the moment that was disorientingly at odds with my lifetime of perfunctory visits to supermarkets.” - Timbah Bell, Japan
Think about the way we handle money in our culture. A credit card swipe, a tap. Occasionally cash bills and coins pass from one hand to the next, but it happens less and less these days.
We lose awareness about where our money is going by quickening the exchange, numbing our consciousness, getting that part "over with" because we are all in a hurry and maybe a little uncomfortable with money in general.
Yet when I read the above, from my cousin who is currently living in Japan, I felt an ache and longing for a cultural ritual that I have never known.
This little snippet, this little scene of bills passing through hands with reverance, touched on a conversation I have had for years in my own heart about the work I do - of wanting to bring more beauty, more reverence - more love, really - into our understanding of money.
How can we can honor the sacred exchange that exists beneath the mundane and routine function of money? The recognition that we are exchanging our life energy, our gifts! in this strange, complicated, and symbolic form of money.
I am left wondering...
How would it feel to receive money from someone as they honor you, your time, the gift that they have received from you? What if they bowed as they paid you?
Would it satiate a deep longing? Would it make you uncomfortable?
What if you bowed in gratitude when paying someone else? Allowing the full feeling of that gratitude to swell in your heart, and pass through your hands?
We don’t bow in our culture, so it would be odd at best to adopt this in our stores. It may bring (unwanted) attention - and actually doing that isn't what I am suggesting - neither is any appropriation of this custom.
But what if, whenever we paid for anything, we intentionally held reverence for the exchange... “In gratitude"
What if this simple message of conscious (silent) gratitude reverberated. What if it were felt, and invisibly received?
How would our economy change if we all practiced this - would we feel more fulfilled? Would we consume less? Would we feel our work had more purpose, simply because we felt others were truly grateful for it?
I want to know the answers. I want to see this quiet and loving revolution take hold.
In gratitude for YOU, maker
In gratitude for YOU, shopkeeper
In gratitude for YOU, farmer
In gratitude for YOU, healer
In gratitude for YOU, laborer
In gratitude for YOU, driver
In gratitude for YOU, shelf-stocker
In gratitude for YOU, checker
In gratitude for YOU, artist
In gratitude for YOU, caregivers
In gratitude for YOU, gentle souls who help the world turn even if you are never paid a penny...
This feels easy to do when we know and love the people we are purchasing from, the small-batch purchase.
Yet what we need more than ever is to deeply pour love into the less personal exchanges.
I am thinking about the products made by hands and resources far away from us - distant because they are out of sight, more abstract. What if we brought gratitude to our Amazon purchases too?
In gratitude for your gifts, the humble generosity of the you I will never know, sharing your life with all of us in every way you do.
In gratitude for the resources from the earth, the plants, the animals, that turned into this form, supporting my own life and yours.
In gratitude for my resources, for the privilege of partaking, purchasing, and receiving these literal fruits of so much labor.
And what about the things we grudgingly spend money on? The times that we don’t feel grateful, only resentful?
Those are times to notice - to not bypass, but bring curiosity. What are those things, what are those times? Do we want to continue using our money in those ways? Or can we reframe the exchange?
No one enjoys paying taxes, yet that is the channel through which our teachers are paid, our libraries are staffed, our roads are repaired. In gratitude for ALL of YOU!
Explore what happens in your heart/mind if you choose to practice this quiet kind of love, of infusing the sacredness of gratitude and love back into every money exchange.
Money can be involved in many things that are corrupt, full of fear, full of greed.
Money can also be a conduit of love, of support, of kindness.
Perhaps Money can mend our broken human hearts in this time we live in. I know it isn't this simple—yet I also know that we have a lot of mending to do, and maybe money is one thread to help us stitch.
I will leave you with the question I roll around and around in my own heart, what if we have a greater influence through money and our human connection than we have been taught to believe? What if we acknowledged the profound web that connects all of us, and sent our gratitude, our love, through the channels that MONEY travels?
Perhaps the next time you swipe, tap, or pass bills to another you will pause, in gratitude.
With deep, deep gratitude for you -
P.S. Please forgive me if I neglected to include YOUR title... In gratitude for YOU, and all the work you do, each day, with your precious life on behalf of all of ours!