How Can I Return The Favor? Biomimicry Institute's Jeanine Benyus Asks a Transformational Question

Love these folks at Biomimicry Institute imagining and then creating new products and services that sync up with Mother Earth.

Jeanine Benyus was on

and wrapping up conversation with Nate Hagens said (I'm paraphrasing)

"Here on Earth we've been given free land, fresh air, clean water and abundant food.

How do we return the favor?"

Her question reverberates today whenever I am walking in the woods, writing friends and family.

How do we return the favor?

There is a question to carry around as we organize movements toward a greener more just world.

And imagine someone crossing the threshold of having a million dollars asking "How can I return the favor?" instead of the ruthless carnage before our eyes with millionaires becoming billionaires and killionaires. Killionaires because it isn't there money, and every Elon Musk killing aid to poor people kills actual poor people in Africa, asia, and here in America.

How can we return the favor?

Let it become a koan for your mind to turn the question over and over on the far shore of your imagination until it is a smooth stone. You pick the stone up and answer the question. What did you discover?

Make it your life work to find out. Benyus is with my teacher Coretta Scott King who takes the abstraction out of the racist class war in America:

Imagine the $40 trillion in tax cuts for the richest people on Earth these last 50 years: Reagan to the convicted felon. Imagine enough work for everyone.

How can I return the favor? Ask every tree and bird and bee you walk by today.

How can I return the favor? Benyus is on to something. If life for you is a gift, if you have enough resources to not work all the time or be cast off onto the street as our homeless are, the gifts keep coming when I ask that question.

Use the question as a journal prompt. How can I return the favor?

Let me know what you discover.

Peace out.

Stop the wars!

Treemendously,

Timothy