You learned to be independent. What comes next?

You know, and you're showing interest in what their system is, that really opens up the dialogue. People will really kind of come out of defence when you ask questions.

Whereas it whereas a credit union, you can make a difference by show up at the AGM and voting a board of directors into power that you could demand what you want to see out of a financial institution.

It sounds very funny to some people, but I get a little emotional teary eyed looking at the beauty of the tree and I just soak in to how frickin' beautiful the world is.

If you're in town and you pass a hundred dollar bill to your mechanic, and then he takes that hundred dollar bill and goes to the grocery store, and then the grocer goes to the butcher.

You have a symbiosis of people that, you know, everybody has a different set of needs, but we all provide solutions for each other's needs and we all, we grow from there.

But ultimately, I think that that's what this is about, that's what community is about, community is not about a structure or organization or a way of thinking, although that's so often what's imposed on communities.

Try in the coming days and weeks and months to look at your neighbors and see in them not what's bad about them, but what's good about them.

Doing things together, supporting one another, trusting one another, big one here, wait for it, respecting one another.

You listen to the individual talking about their concerns. You think about them and then you provide a response that's directly answering what their concerns are.

The true hope with the money is not just so the team members make money, it's so we can actually take some of that money and put it towards good projects in our local communities.

That's brotherhood as well, that's mentorship, And what I was realizing in those moments too, it was community. It was a form of interdependence.

Now, if we could do that in our own local communities where we grow the hemp and then we teach people how to build with the hemp, and now we have like 10, 12, 15, 20 people working on a home together and you're building a home for a community member, right?

Like we're not in competition with one another. We are doing this in service to others. We are passionate about what we do because we truly want to support people on their journeys.

We need to look at who's the community that the land and the retreat center and the community that we're building is embedded in, right?

You know, get to know your local farmers, try to connect with local growers so that you can access your vegetables, your produce, and your meat from local areas.

We need people to hang their hats on 10, 20 different things. And then we just connect all those communities that are hanging their hats on different things.

But just that little bit that we did was so valuable to have kind of a foot in that world, a connection to those plants and understanding them in that way of growing and caring for them.

We do follow people from around the world and locally when we have the opportunity to talk to others, we share information, we learn from one another because none of us can find all of these resources, but we support each other when we need to with clients as well.

So not only you don't want to praise, but you want to remember to love and support without endorsing.

You know, start with one or two foods and develop strong relationships directly with your farmer. And it is so valuable.

We all have a vision of a free Alberta, but if we don't work together to create that vision, it will never happen.

And I think if we were to turn off all those inputs and spend some time alone without anybody telling us anything, it would really help us to come back to self and to know what we actually truly want.

It's just about reconnecting as humans, you know, and reconnecting with the earth and you know, creating whether it be shelter or just artwork, you know, it's an expression of love and belonging and creativity and the connection between us.

Being able to get localized groups of people working together is what we really need. I mean, a platform like this is beautiful, but we've got to bring it down to the neighborhood level.

My ability to respond, and so therefore it culminates in the next thing that I do, which could be a gesture, and is the gesture in the compounding interest of connection and health of my relationship.