Wednesday, August 12, 2009

A life of freedom and joy

If I won $60 million, I would do the following things:
1) pay off all my debts and school loans, consolidate all my bills and expenses, live without concern for deadlines while having everything clear, concise, streamlined, and well managed
2) always carry about $150-200 on me
3) buy my mom a house in Huntington Beach overlooking the ocean
4) travel internationally at least 3 times a year
5) have small, beautiful pied-a-terres in OC, NYC, Washington DC, and Zurich
6) eat healthy, yummy organic foods at each meal/hire a chef
7) get a Ph.D. in psychology (organizational behavior/industrial organizational psychology/mythology)
8) endow a professorship in my advisor's name at Smith & start an annual scholarship
9) do the same thing at my high school and grade school
10) do yoga a few times a week and play beach/indoor volleyball, swim and take up tennis
11) fund the educations of my relatives (cousins mostly)
12) do humanitarian and community activist projects worldwide
13) meet the man of my dreams, and create a partnership that changes the world
14) birth, love, and raise 2 kids
15) participate in community theater
16) sponsor community murals that create new visions for society and inspire people to be involved in their communities in new and fresh ways
17) read the classics, take poetry classes, share meals with my favorite authors
18) spend at least a week in Paris or Venice each year
19) become fluent in French, Spanish & Italian
20) take singing lessons and audition for musicals
21) take on refugee camps, bring healing tools to those communities (hypnotherapy, EMDR, community storytelling) -- study what works and write about it, create pilot programs, study intentional communities, cohousing, etc. Become a developer for new community housing models that empower people and fill the gaps of what's missing at all levels of society.
22) be active in finding and funding organizations/new technologies that remove land mines worldwide
23) be an arts patron and sponsor cross cultural exchanges that create new openings for people to participate in creating communities they love
24) meet people from all over the world and create new bridges and synergies where none existed before
25) get massages once a week
26) buy some fun new clothes and shoes
27) study shamanism with elders in various cultures and share this wisdom with the world
28) write a book about graveyards, funerals and how cultures honor their dead - a book that becomes a reference manual on the subject - a book that Jackie Kennedy would have used to plan JFK's funeral
29) take courses in industrial design, make stuff that delights people and is sustainable
30) become a good cook and gardener
31) wear fun, funky artsy jewelry and support emerging artists by wearing their pieces
32) become the face/spokeswoman for a product that I believe in and use those proceeds to fund community development projects worldwide (landmine removal in Cambodia, clean water projects, refugee housing design and mental health issues)
33) take on the US postal service and make a HUGE difference in the end user experience at post offices around the United States
34) fund Architecture for Humanity, coordinate grants between the Getty and the Hermitage (better placards and more research)
35) do something special for the town of LaGleize in Belgium
36) organize a "Christmas in April" style event called BlockByBlock/BrickByBrick where people fix up their own homes and their neighbors' homes and it takes off and whole communities transform and the process builds trust, makes neighborhoods cleaner, safer and more connected
37) find a single mom with kids and groceries at a bus stop and give her a car
38) I would inspire people to live their dreams, clear up the stuff from the past that keeps them stuck, and get them in touch with what they LOVE to do and who they LOVE to be
39) ...