We may not have wings or leaves, but we humans do have words.

telling a story is an open-ended contract, just like a promise or a gift.

"just because it's a story doesn't mean it's not true"

"But in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it feel this way to you?"

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive." James Baldwin

• Economies form in collective spaces when people define what they value as a group.

• Economies are an indication that a community has not only defined values but also the means of interacting with one another via exchange.

“Nothing comes from nothing, Thieflet; no story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old–– it is the new combinations that make them new.”

no story is ever truly linear because our relationship to any story cannot be linear. as the audience we can stop, pause, replay, reread, skip, leave, look away, come back. we are always acting agents, and this interactivity is integral to the storytelling experience.

"a way of living where everything is alive to you, every person, space, and thing you perceive holds within it the potential for resonance"

everything is a story. even objects. when archeologists find an artifact the first thing they ask is "what can this tell us about them?"

The universe is made of stories,
not of atoms.

Unlike a modern money transaction, which is closed and leaves no obligation, a gift transaction is open-ended, creating an ongoing tie between the participants.

The words “ecology” and “economy” come from the same root, the Greek oikos, meaning “home” or “household”: i.e., the systems of relationship, the goods and services that keep us alive. The system of market economies that we’re given as a default is hardly the only model out there. Anthropologists have observed and shared multiple cultural frameworks colored by very different worldviews on “how we provide for ourselves,” including gift economies.

Gifts cement the mystical realization of participation in something greater than oneself which, yet, is not separate from oneself. The axioms of rational self-interest change because the self has expanded to include something of the other.

In order to make this analysis we make a basic distinction between gift giving on the one hand and exchange on the other as two distinct logics. In the logic of exchange, a good is given in order to receive its equivalent in return. There is an equation of value, quantification, and measurement. In gift giving, one gives to satisfy the need of another and the creativity of the receiver in using the gifts is as important as the creativity of the giver. The gift interaction is transitive and the product passes from one person to the other, creating a relation of inclusion between the giver and the receiver with regard to what is given. Gift giving implies the value of the other while the exchange transaction, which is made to satisfy one’s own need, is reflexive and implies the value only of oneself. Gift giving is qualitative rather than quantitative, other-oriented rather than ego-oriented, inclusive rather than exclusive. Gift giving can be used for many purposes. Its...

Gifts on the other hand, we intuitively recognize as sacred, which is why even today we make ceremonies of giving presents. Gifts embody the key qualities of sacredness... First, uniqueness: unlike the standardized commodities of today, purchased in closed transactions with money and alienated from their origins, gifts are unique to the extent that they partake of the giver. Second, wholeness, interdependency: gifts expand the circle of self to include the entire community.

Usually gift networks are closely tied to kin networks. Custom dictate who gives to whom. To some kin categories you might be expected to give; from others you might expect to receive; and in others the gift flow in both directions.

In a gift economy, wealth is understood as having enough to share, and the practice for dealing with abundance is to give it away. In fact, status is determined not by how much one accumulates, but by how much one gives away. The currency in a gift economy is relationship, which is expressed as gratitude, as interdependence and the ongoing cycles of reciprocity. A gift economy nurtures the community bonds that enhance mutual well-being; the economic unit is “we” rather than “I,” as all flourishing is mutual.