Brian and I flew to San Francisco yesterday for an awesome and inspiring lunch meeting with Aaron, Huy and Jeff Klein from FLOW.

On our much delayed flight home we were gazing out the window as our plane circled Los Angeles.

The city I am always leaving, and always coming back to.

This view of Los Angeles always brings heaviness to my chest. My breath becomes dense and I find myself praying for salvation in a way I haven’t believed in since Sunday school.

What I always imagine is that every light is a life, a body, a person.

 I see myself below as just one light.

 I consider my genuine efforts to tread lightly on the earth.

I think of how much food I throw away, how much plastic and paper (of coarse I recycle) I consume daily with all the packaging, and magazines etc.How much STUFF I have and how many resources it took to manufacture and deliver all my possessions. I imagine what an Eco-drain I am converting virgin resources into landfill mass at an unsustainable rate. And then I look down at the lights and imagine me multiplied by millions.

“Things are getting worse…”

Brian put his hand on my arm and stirred the silence. He said “Isn’t it beautiful?”

Brian was sitting right next to me, sharing the same view but seeing the world from a different perspective.

I jump into his perspective for a moment- Look at what man can create! We can conduct, channel and concentrate energy, we can organize our environment and build these complex webs that are cities and somehow have a sense of order. That really is AMAZING!  That there are millions of people, living stacked together, navigating massive machines at 60mph and we do not have complete chaos.

Everything is natural. Everything beneath us extracted, collected from the earth, designed, transformed and sculpted by human minds, human hands, and human sweat.

And we use what percent of our potential brain capacity? Things are changing, people are wising up, and people will demand businesses that help design and charge whole-heartedly towards a sustainable future.

“Things are getting better…”

 How many times will I look out this window and see the world differently?

How many perspectives can I possibly hold on the same phenomenon, how many contradictions, how much confusion?

How will I cultivate enough wisdom, compassion, and courage to communicate to all those tiny lights beneath me?

Will they listen? And when they do--- what will I say?

How can I trust in Divine Perfection, that I feel at work, at play in every moment?

“Things are already perfect”

(Quotes from Integral Ecology. Part 1. Things Are Getting Worse, Getting Better, and Are Already Perfect. Sean Esbjörn-Hargens Michael Zimmerman