The backlash has begun. I’ve been reading comments about this weekend’s telethon for Haiti saying we should take care of our poor and hungry before giving $57 million to others.

What’s behind that sort of thinking? I do think there’s something in us that makes us want to take care of our own people, our own village, first. But human behavior doesn’t really work that way now that there are 6.5 billion of us. We didn’t raise $57 million this weekend for homeless and hungry people in the US. We don’t really see chronic poverty. It took an enormous tragedy to move us to open our wallets.

And even if we did raise money for our own domestic needs, a dollar raised for Haiti does not take a dollar away from someone here. We are the richest country (still) in the history of the world (although our massive debt is quickly changing that). We spend more than $5 billion a year on ringtones, $40 billion on pet food. $57 million is not a lot of money, really, by comparison.

So what’s going on? Seems like fear based in a scarcity, zero-sum way of thinking. We can sometimes feel there isn’t room for all of us on the lifeboat. And there’s no doubt in my mind that this kind of feeling is going to become more common as we go through the turbulent transitions ahead of us.

But there’s nothing useful there for us. Scarcity, me-or-you thinking keeps us stuck in fear and shuts down our hearts. We need to practice keeping them open.

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There will be endless theories floated as to why Martha Coakley lost the special election in Massachusetts, from opposition to healthcare reform to the glass ceiling that favors male candidates in supposedly liberal Massachusetts.

But one thing is clear. Just showing up isn’t enough any more. By one count, Martha Coakley made 19 campaign stops between the December 8th primary and the Sunday before the election; Scott Brown made 66.

Arrogance, complacency, hubris – whatever you want to call it, it no longer works for the tone-deaf automakers in Detroit or for old-style machine politicians who take the voters for granted. That such a hands-off campaign was run in this time of great anxiety is astonishing. Makes you wonder what those well-paid political consultants were doing to earn their pay.

Really, this is not hard. Treat your customers, voters, fellow citizens with contempt and disdain (and if you’re only willing to make a campaign appearance every couple of days, that’s what you’re doing) and you’re likely going to regret it.

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Fear and excitement both activate our bodies in similar ways. They make our hearts beat faster, they kick off a flow of brain chemicals, and they produce those familiar butterflies in the stomach.

So what’s the difference? My friend Ross Harwood explained it this way: fear causes us to lean back, while excitement causes us to lean forward. He noticed this one time when he was on a rollercoaster with his daughters. The had their arms raised and were leaning in, screaming with excitement. Ross was leaning back, trying to slow down the car with his body.

Same experience, two different reactions.

I was in an experience a few years ago that really had me on my edge. My habitual response would have been to be back on my heels. But I remembered what Ross had told me and I chose in the moment to lean forward and choose excitement instead of fear.

What has you leaning back today?

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My friend Johnny Memphis, former DJ for WRSI (yeah, he was the one immortalized in the Dar Williams song) once noted about Bob Dylan’s song “Dignity,” that it was characteristic of Dylan’s unique genius to write a song on that concept. “Who else would think to write a song about dignity?” he asked with a laugh.

I thought of that while reading Seth Godin’s Linchpin, his new book in which he expands on what may be his central idea: that generosity is not just an admirable and nice thing, but that it is an essential aspect of creativity and making meaning in life.

In this 4-Hour Workweek world, it is moving (another unusual word in the business world) to have Godin write about how generosity brings us closer, and of how real artists are always generous, and of how we all have the potential to create art with our work, whether we teach or write or serve coffee.

This is Godin’s manifesto, his “What Now?” guide to a time in which the factory (in the broadest sense of the term) has failed us. The only rationale choice, he argues, is to become a linchpin: “an individual who can walk into chaos and create order, someone who can invent, connect, create, and make things happen.”

There’s no map here, no guide to living the linchpin life. But Godin builds a powerful case for why we must think of our lives and careers differently than we have in the past, for why our primitive “lizard brain” will try to keep us from considering this new way of being, and (critically) of how inhabiting our genius is more than anything a conscious choice to overcome the brainwashing that has taught us to stand in line, raise our hands, and ask permission.

This is the Seth Godin book most difficult to summarize. And there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s his most important and radical book. Don’t buy it for your college-age kid if you want her to work for one of the big accounting firms.

No, on second thought: please do. That world is dying and offers only the illusion of security. What we need to do now is become indispensable. This is a good place to start.

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I collaborated with photography Maya Krinsky to produce two short pieces for the International Language Institute’s annual fundraising dinner. The photos were a nice break from the video I so often work with, and Maya’s photos really captured these two fine people.

I’m always humbled by the trust people extend when they agree to be interviewed for a project like this. There are so many more human stories to tell.

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We come into this life completely open. Expecting to be loved. Enchanted with ourselves.

And we learn to close. Each time we are rejected by another, or shamed for being in touch with our bodies, or scolded for playing in the mud, we close.

And as we lose our connection to our bodies, we no longer can feel what it means that 850 million of our fellow human beings are hungry. As we lose our connection to the earth, we cannot grasp that our needs for bottled water and other petty conveniences are destroying the planet for future generations.

As we lose our connection to the majesty of who we are, we give in to fear. Every time we play it safe, we sell ourselves short. Every time we reject our true calling, we squander our precious human potential.

I need you, my children need you, the island nations that will be lost when the ocean levels rise need you to not do that anymore.

You can learn to open again. Open to the miracle of life on this fragile planet. Open to the suffering of others, and to the mystery of why you, of all those who have ever lived, are alive at this very moment when the future of our species is in doubt.

How do we open? By noticing when we are afraid, and leaning in anyway. By sitting in the woods or the park each day to rebuild the threads that connect us to the natural world. By looking, as the Buddhist teacher and activist Joanna Macy asks us to do, right into the face of these times, when everything we love is at risk.

“Don’t be afraid of your heart breaking open,” says Joanna. “The heart that breaks open can hold the whole universe. It’s that big.”

Take the risk. Open your heart to rejection and your work to failure. Open to the possibility that you are here to change the world.

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I like this talk: Seth Godin on why good ideas was not inherently valuable. It’s getting things done (which means getting over the obstacles to getting things done that come largely from our lizard brains) that matters.

http://vimeo.com/5895898

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I’m working with some writers, including one who has a book agent quite enthusiastic about his work. So I pay attention when Jonathan Fields says this about the way things used to be:

Those days are long gone, never to return. The publishing world is in mass upheaval right now. Nobody knows what the “right” format is anymore. Print, kindle, ebook. What’s paid? What’s free? And, even after you sell your book or retreat to self-publishing, the good old days of issuing a press release, setting up a book tour and calling on a few friends for a review are gone.

As a fan of Seth Godin and his book Tribes, I’m interested in exploring ways to build the tribe before the book. I don’t think there’s an easy formula, but I do think Jonathan has a lot of good advice to share. Check it out.

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Jim Olsen of Signature Sounds Recordings asked me to work with the EIlen Jewell Band to make a video as their new record was coming out. We shot their version of Shakin’ All Over at the Hooker-Dunham Theater in Brattleboro, VT. A friend of the band added the grainy old-time effects down in Nashville.

Laura and I used two cameras and had the band play the song four or five times. The audio was captured on the soundboard and imported into Final Cut.

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