It’s easy to be mesmerized by appearances. But when the appearance of things elicits anxiety or fear, we are “cooked geese.” And when talking heads or other experts tell us how dreadful things are and will be, if we listen and buy their message, we are cooked “well done.”

Why are other people’s predictions of doom, the ultimate doom, usually wrong? Why are our negative predictions about events and ourselves wrong most, if not all, of the time? Anxiety and fear are seductive. They affect our ability to think and be calm. That affects our judgment.

However, some people do not accept the negative predictions of others. Even in dire circumstances, they see the possibility of something better for themselves.

 A few years ago, a friend gave us the gift of a certain amount of money to lend to people of our choosing all over the world through the website of an  organization called KIVA. Familiar with micro–lending but not with KIVA,  we sat at our computer and read about dozens and dozens of struggling entrepreneurs, mostly in third–world countries. They needed money for a sewing machine, or to buy seed for crops, or more goats to expand a herd.—we saw endless lists of their plans to improve their own lives and the life of their community. So we got excited and began lending. (The usual amount of a KIVA loan is $25.00.)

 Within the next month, we received word that most of our borrowers had reached full funding and were on their way into business! Months later, we were notified that some money had been repaid from our borrowers to our KIVA account—$1.39 and $3.29—so we added more and loaned again. Our loan recipients have been single mothers, other community members, even a whole family. It is a continuing experience and very rewarding to be assisting people who are not mesmerized by the appearance of poverty. They are inspired to reach for a better life and it is a source of pride and pleasure to be one tiny but very useful part of their journey. We have just received word that money has been repaid to our account again, so it’s time to lend again.

In the epilogue of To Find the Way of Love, Oliver says that the problems ahead of us—population growth, environmental degradation, and globalization’s fallout—are the result of trillions upon trillions of individual decisions. Likewise, the solution to these problems and the creation of an alternative society will also result from trillions upon trillions of individual actions. No hierarchy will provide the answer. When each of us can make decisions and choices—not mesmerized by appearances or hierarchies’ proclaimed wisdom—but out of our best judgment, we will perhaps each light a candle in the darkness of ignorance and arrogance.

Oliver & Barbara