Commerce is Creative.

byChieftess

844 followers

Updated 12 years ago

Imagine it's 1775. You have just dragged yourself off of some miserable boat and landed in a place called Massachussetts and it is cold and it is weird and you feel just dreadful. But you trudge off the landing and you straggle off the harbor into town.

You need stuff. Man, you want a warm bed and a cold beer and you want to get warm and stay warm for a little bit before you figure out what you want to do next.

Luckily there are people who have showed up in Massachussets before you did -- and they have all that stuff! They have lodging they built and fires they stoked and stew they made and all you need to do is give them some reasnably affordable ( or possibly outrageous, you might find out later) fee so that you can lay down and wake up rested for breakfast and get to work on your plans to run the whole country.

So imagine what was happening back then. What was happening was people were getting off boats and *figuring out what they could do for each other*. Some people brought their trades from England (or elsewhere) -- candles, books, barrels, corsets, shipping: sugar, ink, shoebuckles. People came here in droves and instantly started thinking about how they could best -- to their ability and knowledge -- participate in gainful, productive but most of all *helpful* activity in order to become part of the New World.

Commerce, in its purest form -- is creative. It's where you and I use our intelligence and personalities, proclivities, talents, knowledge and industry and profit thereby not just for ourselves but for the good of everyone else. Because none of us can do *everything* we want to do -- I can't build a house for example...well, let's not get into all the things I can't do -- but the point is *someone* can do it. And we count on this as a creative force for good everywhere we go all the time.

When you enter the world of commerce, you can't think that the world is stacked against you and everything is all wrong for you, yourself, to become a creative, profitable force for good. What you must understand is that *everyone is counting on your creativity to solve their problem." Everyone is waiting, somewhere, for someone to give them the answer that you might just possibly have. And I don't just mean the copy and paste job you did from a Yahoo forum post to put in your blog. I don' t mean whatever you did to grease through and steal *massive profts* from Amazon.

I mean you. What you can really offer to the rest of the world that is a genuine contribution to life, liberty and happiness here on Earth.

I can't make a candle but I sure would have needed one in 1176. I have no knowledge of agriculture but *somebody* did and if I wanted to maybe, you know -- invent corn flakes I would have to talk to someone who knew about corn.

These are all the things I would need. And I would have to start thinking about what all these magnificient, savvy, creative suppliers *would need back that they couldn't create* -- that I could. And if I did that, well, I would be welcome because I would be needed there. And if I did that...well. I could feed my family, build a house and employ people and purchase things, all available to me through the strange and miraculous network of creative commerce.

Commerce is creativity in society. Commerce is how we become useful to the larger world. Commerce is the way *we interact directly* with the massive creative force that enriches all of us -- society, interaction, exchange of ideas, life energy, prosperity and hope.

We've gotten into a weird funk here in our thinking where we are so used to being consumers that being a producer - a creator -- seems like a faroff practice meant for other people who are better at it or richer or stronger or smarter than us. We've been told that the big guy is taking all the money and all the contracts and the economy is working against us to make us all into endlessly draining wallets as we consume what we are not, somehow, deserving enough to produce.

Really?

Let's look at something like Walmart. Walmart is a profitable entity, no doubt, and it has cornered the market on cheap junk and tons of parking. However -- one thing Walmart does all day is figure out what it can do for you and me. What would we need, what would we buy, what would we come back for.

But Walmart can't do everything. It can only do what it does, supply what it can think of, offer what it knows to offer.

But Walmart can not be you. Walmart can not *invent anything new*, or gaze deeply at a specific need, one you know about intimately, and fill it. Walmart can not do everything, and that is why there is room -- in fact endless room for you and me to *figure out what we can do for each other*. This will never change. It is endlessly renewing, without limit. There is *always* an opportunity out there to serve, profitably, somebody else who can not do what you can do, or does not know what you know. Or needs something you have in abundance. *Always*.

So don't ever think to yourself that your participation does not matter. And never believe for a minute that this unbelievably dependable, open and profitable practice will not accept you. It wants you. It needs you. Somebody does. Lots of people do. Right now. Commerce is creative. You are a creative force for good. Every day you sit down to work on your own little bit of creative commerce, you are making the world go round. Your own, and everyone else's.