I AM THE PRODUCT OF...

I AM THE PRODUCT OF...

Here are things I am profoundly grateful for in my life:

• I am the co-founder of a successful law firm in Boulder, Colorado, which fully supports a comfortable lifestyle for my family.
• I have a nourishing and vibrant marriage currently in its 12th year.
• I have two healthy and vital children.
• I have a wonderful "life/work balance." I enjoy my law and mediation practice, and have ample time for outside activities, including performing music regularly as a serious pursuit.
• My relationship with my kids is strong, and I am constantly opening up to new ways to parent them, treating them with respect and dignity while modeling a self-actualized life.
• At age 44 I am radiantly healthy, feeling better than I have ever felt. I eat clean and delicious foods. I exercise daily with a variety of running, hiking, biking, and yoga.
• I have a strong spiritual practice, meditating twice per day.

Now the important part: I think all of the above blessings are a product in some small way of my own genetic makeup and how I’ve chosen to use my natural talents and intellect, BUT I believe it is powerful for me to name and acknowledge that the above blessings are predominantly the product of the following circumstances of my life:

• My parents are white and were both born in the United States, where there is relative freedom of thought and action, where tremendous resources are located or have been gathered from around the world (perhaps often through economic/debt coercion or military coercion), and where many societal resources and avenues to wealth are available (especially to white citizens).
• I was born (and have lived almost all of my life) in the United States.
• On the foundation of the above circumstances, I grew up in a relatively safe suburban area.
• On the foundation of the above circumstances, my parents had sufficient resources and commitment to feed me the most healthful foods they knew about and had access to.
• On the foundation of the above circumstances, my parents had sufficient resources and commitment to push me to excel academically and to help me attend college and law school.
• I am white, which means I have had less barriers to entry to almost everything in the United States.
• I am what is referred to as a cis-gendered (non-trans) straight male, which means in part that many societal resources and avenues to wealth have been more easily available to me relative to females or other gender minorities.
• I am of average size, which means many things have been constructed for use by males like me.
• On the foundation of the above circumstances, I have always had sufficient resources (or access to credit) to invest in personal development, relationship development, spiritual development, and therapeutic programs supporting body, mind and spirit, and have lived in areas where such programs are easily available.
• On the foundation of the above circumstances, I have enjoyed the privilege of extensive world travel, including unique cultural experiences such as Burning Man.
• I had the ability to pursue a non-punitive avenue to correct for unfortunate or ill-advised financial choices and circumstances, via the bankruptcy laws of the United States.

I have tried to be thoughtful about what exactly to thank for my abundance in life, but please comment if you notice one or more missing elements.

The main reason behind this post is to model a thorough acceptance of the sometimes hidden factors of our station in life, and also to identify some of the fundamental things humans need to live abundantly, so that we can begin to work together to create a culture where everyone has access to these things.

Upon review of my list above, I flag these important ingredients for human abundance:

• Relative freedom of thought, action, and travel
• Sufficient monetary and non-monetary resources to build and exchange things and ideas, and to nourish the body (e.g., universal basic income)
• Communities free of coercive debt or forceful extraction of their local resources
• Communities free of unregulated criminal activity
• Tools that have been constructed for use by all kinds of different people
• Access to, and no unjustifiable barriers of entry to, good quality services, education, employment, clean and healthful food, etc.
• Laws and systems that allow for non-punitive correction of past mistakes or misfortune

There are surely more ingredients as well.

If this post resonates with you, I invite you to re-post and re-write using your own life as the basis for this exploration of what is required to produce abundance in life.

Thanks for reading.