I am Enough
What if we remembered that we are enough? What happens when we know we have choices, that things can be done differently and that we are all full of potential?
In this Podcast we share stories, experiences and tools, our own as well as others who join us to share their journey towards enoughness. We challenge cultural beliefs and patterns, and draw on the Wisdom of Nature exploring how all of this can support us in seeing our wholeness and create new possibilities.
I am Enough
Flow of Gifts: Finding Freedom in Natural Generosity
What does it take to see your unique wholeness? What does it truly mean to give from this place rather than scarcity?
In this conversation we explore the often-overlooked connections between feeling "enough", the ability to see out own gifts and our capacity for genuine generosity.
Scott Plate, Alex Papworth and Mark Henderson join me, Lyn Man, to examine how labels, expectations and societal definitions of worth create artificial barriers to authentic being and giving.
We explore how our early experiences shape our perception of our gifts—from it's Scott's childhood "too muchness" being labeled as irritation rather than expressiveness, to Alex's adoption of the "computer person" identity that provided safety but limited authentic expression. Together, we share how we can shed these confining labels to rediscover the natural flow of giving that emerges when we simply allow ourselves to be.
From the place of our own gifts we then turn to exploring how crisis situations—like the recent wildfire in Scott's community— move us from a transactional mindset. In these moments doors open instinctively, resources are shared freely, and our inherent humanity shines through. This prompted us to ask: what prevents us from living with this same openness in ordinary moments?
Drawing wisdom from nature, which "never asks itself if it's enough," we explore how scarcity thinking has permeated our psyche since humans first began stockpiling resources and how we might return to behaving more like an ecosystem, where giving and receiving flow naturally.
Finally we invite you to join the #Flow of Gifts initiative through sharing your own gifts - for example creative expressions - on social media to inspire a community of generous giving.
Thank you for listening and taking the time to explore our podcast.
Earthaconter: Connection, Exploration and Expansion
www.earthaconter.org
Welcome to I Am Enough, the space where we explore journeys back to our forgotten birthright of enoughness, to draw on natural wisdom, along with awareness, acceptance and compassion, to support each of us on that journey and embrace our wholeness, despite what society tells us. Each one of us is enough exactly as we are. My name is Lynne Mann and I'd like to welcome you to this space where we explore enoughness, people's journeys along the path to feeling I am enough, and look at what can support each of us on that journey. Hello and welcome to another episode of I Am Enough, the space where we embrace our wholeness.
Lyn Man:So today I have with me Scott Plate, Alex Papworth and Mark Henderson, and today we're going to be looking at things from a slightly different perspective. We're going to be looking at actually how we get to share our gifts, how we see our gifts and actually what does it mean to share and give. So it can be a very wide topic, but for me it very much comes back to actually us seeing that we all are unique and we all come with our own unique gifts, and those are things that we're not actually really taught to see and I think it can take a long time before we start to appreciate something as a gift and an ability to share it with others. Very often it's suppressed and we hold it back and so, you know, in the conversation we were just having beforehand, one of the things Scott said was actually, you know, the gifts, how we give, but also the gifts we see, relate back to us being enough, feeling we're enough.
Lyn Man:So just setting that scene. I'm just going to open the floor now and just ask you what was your own end up with the realization of the gifts that we have?
Mark Henderson:I
Mark Henderson:I think the definition of our society's definition is very narrow and is based around educational achievement and work performance, and those are the most highly valued. So that's what comes into focus in society, and not everything else, which is a huge amount. And I think also everything is seen through a lens. Also, everything is seen through a lens, a transactional lens, which is also a problem insofar as it makes us undervalue ourselves and our gifts. So I think there's a whole journey of discovering what our gifts are and actually feeling worthy enough to to fully embody them and share them
Scott Plate:yeah, that's.
Scott Plate:that's very true from my point of view as well. Um, my own journey was I was kind of a hyperactive child so. So the message I received was you're just too much, you have too much. So the earlier messages were oh, I better dial it in, I better restrain.
Scott Plate:But I learned over time that the gift that was embedded in that too muchness was expressiveness. There was a kind of effusive capacity and a real joy in expressing and trying to do so. Clearly, as a child, I had really no discipline around it, and it was made clear to me that discipline was what was necessary in order for the gift to have value. And so, in and of itself, the only value was that it was irritating. So I learned to borrow Mark's word, transactionally that if I were to render the gift in a specific form, it would be appealing to someone else and would possibly even useful. But the earlier message was the gift that I was given, which was energy and desire, and expressiveness was just coloring way outside the lines. So it needed to fit a mold, a societally described and shaped mold, in order for it to have value.
Alex Papworth:Yeah, it's somewhat connected to my experience. It's somewhat connected to what you were saying, but I was noticing, as you were speaking, how I quickly grabbed onto labels at an early age and I think that's that safety of putting on that hat at an early age and I think that's that safety of putting on that hat. So, um, you know, when I was probably my early teens, getting into computers and, uh, you know the last few years realizing that what I thought I enjoyed from that experience and you know, trying to pursue a career was, was, was not actually what I, what I really enjoyed. There's something about the security of putting on that hat and being recognized. Well, you know, in this case, alex, he's into computers, which was, you know, rewarded, a very sound career choice. So you know it's very safe, isn't it? I guess it's maybe a different language, but from what you're saying, scott, it's about feeling safe. So it's very easy to grab hold of those and then feel safe, feel recognized, accepted, valued, all those sorts of things. Actually, when I was reflecting earlier, I was thinking about the last five or six years and deciding. A lot of the value I see in my contribution is how do I work or do I, what do I do at work? And as a, as a piss assemblist, having been very disenchanted with that label, its limitations, discovering adventurer was labeled and it was interesting that it's still a label, but it it felt a lot more comfortable and, you know, came from reflecting on childhood experiences and felt really much, more, much more roomy, I suppose. So, still a sort of label and feels a bit safer, but it's, um, yeah, there's a lot more space and it's a. It was a better fit for me, I guess, I guess, to bring it up today.
Alex Papworth:What I find fascinating is that even choosing that label is compromising, I suppose, in a way. And you know, very recently I've noticed the desire to say well, you know, I can't even describe it, I don't need to. You know, this is really embracing, just sort of. I guess it's a form of validation or validation by others that this is who I am, this is, you know, coming back to that theme of utility, transactional, this is what I can do. So, you know, would you like some of that? You know, is this useful to you? But I'm really, really pleased with the idea of yeah, no need to do that, I'm not even going to bother, I just know it's useful. There's something of that capacity that I've got. Whatever it doesn't really matter, I'm just going to carry on being that, whatever it is, without that label. There's a sense of liberation that comes with a sense of freedom.
Scott Plate:I was just thinking the same thing, alex, because I think, in a sense, freeing ourselves from the label of how something is useful or how its usefulness is defined enables us to experience gift in its truest sense. It's something that flows through us because we allow it to. I remember working as an actor and working with really difficult directors who were not well creative, put it this way. They weren't conducive to a creative space where things were being tried and not tried. It was more like no, this is where you are and this is what's wrong with that. So it doesn't really make you feel like expanding or sharing your gifts when the risk is that they're just going to be wrong.
Scott Plate:Translate this negative direction into something that has a larger thematic significance in terms of the story that we're trying to tell collectively. So the criticism doesn't stop with me, it comes through me and becomes applied by me to help tell a larger story. So, in a sense, anything that's given to me can become a gift, even if it wasn't intended to be that way. So the gift is my determination to make in any context. I can make this be something that happens for me or something that happens to me. If it happens for me, then it's a gift. If it happens to me, it tends to become an affliction. So I appreciate you're working yourself free of the limited kind of viewpoint of what the world would have you be in that sense, because truly a gift-giving exercise is one of generosity, and generosity in terms of magnanimity, but also in terms of generating energy, generating change, you know. So it's generous in that sense. So it doesn't stop with us, it comes through us and continues to bless other people.
Mark Henderson:I love that, scott. I'm thinking just what comes to mind is that, as part of nature, other aspects of nature just are and give freely and contribute to their ecosystem and contribute to their ecosystem, which in turn allows more life, and so maybe, in our purest giving, that's what we also can offer. It's a greater experience of life and better conditions for for life, for for others and, uh, and for those ecosystems that we operate in I agree, that's what it's like.
Scott Plate:What are we feeding the field so that others might feel well? And um, you know this conversation feels like that to me already. You know, I'm experiencing generosity from each person, whether it's from a listening standpoint or a sharing standpoint or a willingness to connect standpoint. So you know how to create. To be someone who creates conditions or contributes to conditions where everyone can thrive feels like the best expression of the gift, and the gift of being alive. I like the understanding of ecosystems simply lending themselves to each other, giving themselves to each other, so that the entire meaning is enhanced.
Mark Henderson:We understand it for what it is and I love how that comes back to each of us being enough, because we're unique expressions of life and perhaps we wouldn't be here if we weren't supposed to be here to give our gifts and to contribute to that, uh, to those ecosystems in the unique way that we can. And that also makes me feel that, you know, all of life is sacred and all of us are sacred and are gifts. And you know, wouldn't it be amazing when we, more of us, come back to that realization?
Scott Plate:Yeah, Agree, it reminds us, you know we were. Yeah, I agree. It reminds us, you know, we were talking a little before you know our conversation, about how we might frame it, and I'm curious about what distracts us from remembering that we are enough so that we can remain in a state of being able to give, no matter what the circumstances are. I shared that my community in southwestern New Mexico had gone through a fire recently. It came very close to town and it was around the edge of a you know two or three million acre wilderness called the Hilo Wilderness, and a chunk of it that we travel often has been burned, and so it's personal for many people who live here, and a chunk of it that we travel often has been burned, and so it's personal for many people who live here. But what was interesting to emerge is, under duress, people instinctively opened doors and there were 1,400 firefighters from six or seven different states. Hotels were just saying come on in here, don't worry about it, take a shower. People had schools are opening football fields as camping grounds. It was just this interesting instant mobilization toward creating space for what was necessary for everyone to feel safe.
Scott Plate:And then the question arose how do we live so that that isn't apparent to us every moment, as though every moment has that potential to be transformative, to be generous in that way. And I think it's when I get stuck in me, when I get stuck in the material sense of oh, I have these things, and they somehow define who I am, then they feel static and they don't flow, they can't be given for some reason, because my belief about what's happening has become static and it's. I think the shamanic tradition I studied talks about something called a hollow bone, and it's where what you're given is never yours but you are offering yourself as an instrument of nature through which goodness can come or service can come, but your only work is to stay open, keep that work clear and flowing, and I forget to do that, I forget what my work is and I think I have to do something when all I have to do is actually stay available for what comes through me to be given away.
Lyn Man:I'm just going back to what Alex shared in the labels and the having to give something of value. Having to give something of value, and it ties into what you're saying there, I think, scott, about being feeling that stuckness and it's, it's almost, you know, there's a pressure is what I feel like. What I'm feeling is when we have to put a label on something, when we have to think that we're giving value, when we have to feel like we're showing up in a way that that label is, then there's this element of pressure that takes us away from the natural state of actually just being. And, as Alex said, that freedom of not having that label and just showing up as, as you and it really made me think about you know, even going back to how I was starting the conversation about our gifts, because it really is comes from that place of feeling we have to see our gifts, that we have to name our gifts. But what I'm hearing now is actually it's about just letting go and taking these layers away and allowing ourselves to be without putting on a label, without creating a pressure of having to give in a certain way or do in a certain way or find our gift.
Lyn Man:That's often the thing it's like well, I must have some sort of gift. What is it? Well, I must have some sort of gift, what is it so? Just peeling those layers back, it's just going back to. It's. Interesting, scott, you said that it's almost the difficult situations where people are really put under pressure, or kind of like the disaster zones, where people open up and they come together and they become more of themselves. But what other do you see or know, where either people you've seen or yourself actually just steps back and allows yourself to be who you genuinely are, rather than allowing that or feeling that pressure to be someone else, or looking for being something or attaching a label.
Scott Plate:What's coming through for me is, in my marriage, a daily practice of turning toward my husband when things are difficult, instead of away. It's counterintuitive to open myself to something that I'm afraid is going to hurt me, but it's. The only gift I have to give in that moment is my attention and presence, because nothing else that I could possibly bring to the equation could be remotely considered a gift. Because, uh, the instinct when we're navigating something difficult is solitude and I can't give anything to anyone from that place other than space in which I think sometimes people do need. But it feels like it goes against everything I want to do to turn toward someone and be present without damaging further what's already been hurt, and that's good. That's true of any relationship.
Scott Plate:Any label I bring to the interaction, as Alex was saying earlier, is not a gift, it's a restriction, it's a limitation. So I'm thinking of interactions with colleagues and friends where you know I want to be right and I get to be right, and of course what I want I get, and so I get to, you know, get to be alone and in my rightness, but there's nothing that's been given there. What's being taken is the relationship. So that's another instance I can. Now that I think about it, it's fairly common. You know it's not. It's my marriage is a good example because it's under a microscope in a way. We see it up close, but it happens in almost any relationship that I can find a path through that interesting, isn't it?
Alex Papworth:you ask the question, you need to find the words and it's, and then you start to label so it's. I'm just going to reply with silence and see if you can work it out from there the sphinx has spoken.
Alex Papworth:Work it out from the energy you're feeling right? Yeah, I was trying to learn, you know, and, similarly to scott, reflecting on the relationship with, uh, my wife, sophie and um and others, other friends and family and um, you know, you want to use words like capacity or my capacity, and it's, I think the nearest I can sometimes get to talking about this is if I'm not reacting. It's like a gift of doing nothing Either I think, crucially for me, neither to myself nor them. There's a point of friction, there's intention, and it's my tension, it's my friction, but I'm and again, a word, absorbing maybe, but I'm not. There's. No, these words seem quite adequate, but just actually allowing, perhaps, I'm just allowing. It feels like waves, waves flowing, low-node waves to flow, giving time and space and then seeing, being patient actually, and just seeing what, what eventually emerges you know, as opposed to.
Alex Papworth:I think that the key thing is that not, as they're not reacting is is um, yeah, something that that comes comes to me, is a response to your, your question. Yeah, there's the best words that I can find.
Mark Henderson:Yeah, you make me think, Alex, about presence and the obvious connection between being present and the gift, and presence being one of the greatest gifts we can give, to both ourselves and to others, can give to both ourselves and to others and it's that creating that space.
Mark Henderson:Isn't it to respond rather than react as well if we're present? And if we're present, we're more expansive and can look at the situation from different perspectives, which is more likely to lead to a more favorable outcome for all involved in the situation, and I'm thinking beyond family. When have I experienced that? In answer to your question, lennon, I think it's very rare, but it's in certain communities like ours, like Arthur Gontor. It's also, you know, when you go on retreats, and everybody who's there is signed up to a certain way of being with each other and in relation to each other. So there's no judgment and there's a lot of presence and a lot of openness. But these are little pockets in a jungle of society that wants to keep moving us along to the next thing and distracting us and keeping us in our heads and anything but present.
Scott Plate:Right, I appreciate what you're saying, mark and Alex. I think another practice that comes to mind is when we think about how rare a gift it really is to be genuinely happy for someone else and for someone else's accomplishment. And I think one thing that I admire about the connection that we have here is that people we take care to celebrate each other, and I think that that people we take care to celebrate each other and I think that's not even a we take care to, it happens and we remember to because it's a value. But I've noticed how often the narrative can become I withhold what I could say in on your behalf. Because of my own not enoughness, I don't feel as though I have enough, so I can't celebrate you because that means I would have nothing On some level. The story I tell myself is that. So then I think about how rare it is to be celebrated for something, but that could be a gift all by itself.
Scott Plate:The ability to celebrate another's gift, I think, in a sense of gift is not necessarily having something, but of being something. So if I am labeled, as Alex said before, as expressive or generous, that's one thing, it's static, but if I am capable of being something generous for someone else, then I'm expressing a gift. I'm also giving it away, because that's what a gift is meant to do it's meant to be given and to generate, hopefully, that impulse which shifts the dynamic that you were describing in society, that keeps us us in our heads, that keeps us defined and label. So so the other practice, the question that gets begged is okay if we're, how do we receive? How do we receive something from someone that is generously and sincerely given? Many of us are oh, I couldn't, possibly.
Scott Plate:I'm I, you know, mod Modesty shows up and it just makes me horribly uncomfortable to acknowledge what you're showering me with, because it just reminds me that I'm not enough and I'm completely in that category. Very uncomfortable receiving praise. I don't know what goes on in me, but I can feel myself shrinking. I can feel myself I don't know. That's another conversation. However, I think the measure of being able to give a gift is also being able to receive it when we know it's sincerely meant and in a sense, maybe that's the practice is creating space in the field that we share as human beings to genuinely love and celebrate and and and shine a light on each other's individuality. As alex says, like showing up as you and then having that recognized sincerely by a fellow, a fellow being, you know. And then how hard it is to hear that for some reason, how difficult I can't receive this goodness I'm, because I'm just bad on some level you know, so it is fascinating, isn't it, how difficult it can be to receive, and particularly to uh receive something almost that isn't expected.
Lyn Man:If you think back to to school and you know we were taught it was always there was an expectation around well, if I'm good, then I'll get this or whatever, whereas actually to be given something unconditionally, when it's just somebody recognizing who we are, or just giving us something for whatever reason it doesn't have to be a reason it's very difficult and it is interesting how that's the case. And, yeah, what is it behind it? I'd just love to hear what Mark and Alex's thoughts are on this.
Alex Papworth:I've actually, as is my gift, to go the other way. I'm noticing, actually it's not, I mean, it's quite the opposite, it's not really the opposite but actually that desire for praise, you know myself, that desire for recognition which is, you know, as I say that it's recognising, the desire for validation, which is really there's a little bit of a like I'm a good boy, you know, in that message I need to be recognised because I'm working really hard and someone needs to recognise that, because it is really hard, and I'm quite annoyed that no one is passing me on the head and saying what a good boy I'm being, which I guess is yeah, I'm calling it opposite, but it's all the flip side, but I don't think it's that at all actually, maybe there's something interesting in there somewhere. Maybe Mark can make sense of this Giving Mark the gift of the seer. Yeah, thanks, alex.
Mark Henderson:Yeah, I just want to link back to what Scott said and what you know, talking about giving praise when what happens perhaps giving praise when we perhaps don't feel full enough to give it, and whether it's authentic in that moment or whether it's showing vulnerability, I'm not sure. I'm sort of just trying to explore that. I'm fascinated by the concept of the act of giving is actually a gift to ourselves. So, and the fact that when people are facing hardship and emergency that that is the sort of you know we see it time and time again must feel better for sharing the little we have or giving praise, even when we perhaps don't have the full energy to do that, or any sort of giving. We're in some way rewarding ourselves and it's hard to sort of. I think we can sense the feeling, but it's hard to sort of describe what's happening in that moment.
Lyn Man:Yeah, yeah, it's interesting because when you were saying that, mark, I was taken back to the very early stages of human development and where we were living in small groups together and everybody worked together to gather food.
Lyn Man:Everybody had their own bits and pieces, but it wasn't until farming came along and people started trading and that it then really became transactional and the money became involved. And it's just interesting when you look at it from that concept. Is there an element that and it goes back to what Alex has said about being valued that we've become so conditioned to having to give value, having to receive value, having to exchange value in whatever way it is, value in whatever way it is that actually we have to take back all these layers or something major has to happen for people to really come back to the core of who humans are, to humanity. It's interesting even that word humanity For me that's really humanity is almost a way of describing when we come back to humanity. That's what humanity is at its bare bones, at its bare bones. So just looking at it from an almost evolutionary perspective of how societally we've developed, has that actually impacted our ability to give and receive?
Alex Papworth:Yeah, fully, yeah, yeah, when, when we was conversational, we started, I was thinking about any conversations which involved money or involved a potential exchange of money, and reflecting on my you know how I was trying to articulate my value in a way that was, you know, true but useful, so that, you know, this individual could see my value and say, oh okay, I need some of that. But it just felt very, you know, it just felt very artificial, even though what I was saying was my latest and best effort to articulate my value in a way that feels true to me. But it's still that translation. It is essentially that translating for the marketplace, and that's something that I'd be curious to see if it resonates at all. But it was that crisis and that disaster scenario.
Alex Papworth:It feels like this is me in the world of the market, intellectualizing and trying to work and navigate my way through, and then there's a disaster where someone needs food shelter. I need food shelter, whatever it may be. It's almost like there's a. It feels like there's a. Thank god, I can just. I can just let go of that, I can just do what I really want to do. So it's, you know, your gut taking over and I really want to give to people and now I can without having to work out. You know this sort of chess game in my head of um. You know where, where, where you know financial exchange is involved somewhere. I'm completely intellectualizing this. As opposed, you know, coming back to your humanity, Lyn, just responding to this deeper humanity of giving and sharing and suddenly it all flows so easily because we've managed we are grateful for the opportunity not to include a commercial or monetary value in this whole exchange.
Scott Plate:Interesting. Sorry, go ahead, Mark.
Mark Henderson:Yeah, I was just remembering a fantastic talk I heard last year by Jennifer Garvey-Berger, who talks about this in a business context and how our relationships in business and within a corporation are transactional to love. That's how she describes it, I think, in her book. But if we dare to, in other words, to lift others and drop the transactional and the conditional exchanges, then so much changes. It really opens up for people to step into their authentic selves and to give so much more so that you know you can call it regenerative. I mean it just creates so much more life in the relationship and the consequences, the positive results of that for the relationship, for how it is to turn up at work and for the organization, for productivity Everything must thrive on the back of that. And you know why aren't we doing that? It's just we're so entrenched in this transactional mindset that is making us sick.
Scott Plate:Yeah, I love that phrase, rise to love. I was thinking, you know, we're drawing a line in an interesting way between markets and ecosystems. You know, mark raised the notion of how an ecosystem functions and Alex was raising the notion of how a market can function. What is a market if it doesn't function on a transactional paradigm? So I think that's what I'm hearing Mark describing and I remember Charles Eisenstein wrote a book, sacred Economics, and there is a practice.
Scott Plate:Lynn's question began when we were evolving out of an agrarian, you know, to a trade based kind of paradigm. There was in most communities actually very little reserved for self. There was a commons, you know, a common shared plot which everyone had a hand in tending, but it was meant to feed an entire community. So the priority was placed on what was shared and not what was traded in one sense. And industrial revolution, you know, came along and we had a. We developed this awesome ability to create and mass produce individual units of the same thing. So they became commodities and we began to kind of sub-compartmentalize this holistic view of what a market is into what individuals need it and how much we, how quickly we could supply those.
Scott Plate:So you know, I wonder, you know, for example, we have chickens now. We eggs just got a little expensive so we went back to raising chickens and we have 10 laying hens and they're apparently prolific layers they're habituated to this climate. And there's 10 hens and they're apparently prolific layers they're habituated to this climate. And there's 10 hens which can lay about 300 eggs a year. So we're not going to consume 3000 eggs, there's no way. So there's an organization here called the Commons, interestingly enough. So it deals with issues of food insecurity, because where I live it's there's a lot of people who don't have food security. So it makes sense to me to produce, for that entity is. In other words, we can give eggs because we're not going to consume them.
Scott Plate:There's a lot of so many benefits we get from the chickens. You know the plants love the manure. We eat our share of eggs. You know we can compost. Anyway, so there's the abundance. See, nature never asks itself the question am I enough? It never does, you know. But for some reason we do and we are of nature. But I think our separation from that causes the question to arise in us that do I have enough to do this? I don't think nature ever treats itself like a market and says I don't speak to that. I have have tried to change business culture to behave more like an ecosystem, or at least to draw the example from nature so that we could use these paradigms. But it strikes me that, if we can remember that, we never have to ask the question am I enough? We never have to because there always will be enough. Even when there's a fire, then it shows there's more than enough.
Mark Henderson:So yeah, yeah, so it feels, scott, like scarcity has been sort of planted in our psyche somehow, and going back many hundreds of years perhaps since, as Lynn mentioned, the first field was cleared for growing, I don't know, but as soon as people started to store and they had a bigger store than others and yeah, you can see how that ended up bigger store than others and yeah, you can see how that that ended up. And you know, scarcity is, uh is one of our biggest. That mindset, I think, is one of our biggest limitations today and and drives so much, so much of our behavior, so much of our limiting beliefs and, yeah, holds us back from generosity, from giving, from sharing.
Lyn Man:I'm just going to take it back to nature. It's been brought up early on, been brought up again, but it is that that nature does just give, but when we can go out into it and and see the beauty, when we can be in it, when we can see ourselves as part of it, going back to to what mark was saying about lifting everybody up around us and coming from that place of the heart, I think being in nature and seeing what nature gives and how it works when we're seeing ourselves as separate from it actually helps us to do that. Yesterday morning I was. I was walking and there were lots of brambles, blackberry, everywhere, just the. Some of them were full flowers. Some had had the flowers had. Some of the petals had fallen off, some were forming fruit that was still green, some were just, you know, just had all the petals had gone.
Lyn Man:So you know, most people would probably have walked past it. You could look at it and say it was really ugly, or you could just look at it as a gift from nature evolving in that one. It was giving me something to reflect on right there. And then there was the potential of the, the fruits to come that will nourish something. There's the seeds in there that will come.
Lyn Man:And there was just the, you know, when I took a few pictures actually I took quite a few pictures, but it was just looking at it as when I looked back at the pictures it was almost like a wild bouquet that was being presented. And I think it just comes back to that perspective. And, scott, you've brought up a number of times, really, if we can look at ourselves as enough, we can look at others as enough, at ourselves as enough, we can look at others as enough. And going back to what I think is alex, mark, both shared, about being present, and it's that, that presence, that attention, when we can be in that, then is that actually bringing us back to humanity, to being humanity?
Mark Henderson:Now I'm dying to sort of deep dive into the word humane and humanity back in this conversation? No, because, as you said, I got the same connotation of humane. You know that that's a very humane thing to do or that's inhumane there. There's certain implied qualities there that that are. You know, what we're touching on here is around compassion and giving and sharing, um, so, uh, so yeah, I'm keen, keen to sort of explore that more.
Lyn Man:Another time.
Scott Plate:What's interesting about the word human is? Humus is the same root Soil. You know the piece that we, you know the fluff that we till is. That's what we are, that's what we call ourselves, but that's what we are, that's what we call ourselves, but that's what our relationship is. And it's interesting from a language standpoint. It all stems from humus, and humanus, I think, is the Latin derivative, and to dust we shall return.
Scott Plate:In the end. We do become that which we walk on, and maybe that's what being human is, is being of the earth in that way is truly being of the earth in its original definition. What that means, I think, is going to change depending on your perspective, but I think since I've become close to this community, that's the awareness of what it means to be earth connected has been enhanced. When I moved to New Mexico and met this community, there were two things that happened at the same time that reminded me of those things. So humanity to me could mean our common awareness that we live on a planet, and maintaining that awareness is ultimately a humane act, because it respects everything that's here.
Scott Plate:It assumes connectedness. It assumes connectedness and I guess in a way, the scarcity that Mark was speaking of before starts with this connection from all. That is, if I feel disconnected from this abundant source of life and energy, of course I'm going to feel scarcity and I'm going to start stocking my larder to give myself evidence that I have more than enough so that I can remember some version of abundance. But I think what's humane is to create space with the abundance that's all around us and not be distracted by the illusion of busyness and stuff so that we get confused about what gifts truly are. I think that's been my practice is confusion about it. I drank the Kool-Aid for many years. I'm still drinking it, but I'm fortunate to have conversations like this to remind me that there's another practice that's possible.
Mark Henderson:If you look around us and look at the number of individuals on our planet have really stockpiled, and much more than just for a rainy day. So we're probably at the very extreme of that behavior, I imagine. I would hope, and maybe the natural cycle will lead us beyond that to something that works for all rather than few.
Scott Plate:Or some incredible series of rainy days that washes all of that away. It's like, okay, we've reached saturation point, let's flood, right yeah.
Lyn Man:So, mark, I would like to get just conscious of of time here, but one of the things we had talked about recently and have started doing was I don't know how to describe it, so I'm going to leave you to describe it but it's called the Flow of Gifts. So if you could maybe just share a bit about what that is, because that was what sparked this conversation.
Mark Henderson:Yeah, I'd love to, yeah.
Mark Henderson:So I think it came from a discussion that we had about, you know, valuing what we have within the Earth to Culture, community, and how do we give a sense of that for people who are maybe looking in and wondering what it is.
Mark Henderson:And that led us on to talk about islands and flow, and I had this picture in my mind that came up about an experience I had in the backwaters of Kerala in India, and large organic pieces and blooms and flowers floating by on this expansive flood, and so that's sort of where the flow of gifts idea started, and as we discussed it, we thought wouldn't it be lovely to invite people to share their gifts in some way and to do that using the medium of social media and just to, yeah, to inspire each other to share, and those could be photographs or poems or writings or illustrations or recordings of music or all sorts of different things that can be shared.
Mark Henderson:So we invite you, listening to this, to join that flow and to share and be inspired. The hashtag flow of gifts um on linkedin and facebook and instagram to um, so that you can you can look up that hashtag and and see what's already been. We've started recently to to share, so it feels like this is something that, uh, the world needs right now is more sharing of our gifts, so we warmly invite you to join us in the flow.
Lyn Man:Thank you, Alex. Would you like to add anything on to that?
Alex Papworth:No, I don't think anything needs to be added to that for me. Okay, thank you. Well, it's a beautiful way to end.
Lyn Man:I don't think anything needs to be added to that for me. Okay, thank you. Well, it's a beautiful way to end and I really appreciate all of you for coming here and sharing your gifts with everybody and just letting the conversation, as always, just go where it needed to go. So, thank you all.
Scott Plate:Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.
Lyn Man:Thank you for listening to this episode of I Am Enough. We hope you enjoyed it and are inspired to see yourself as enough and create possibilities. It and are inspired to see yourself as enough and create possibilities.