Book 84 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title – A Beaver Must Dam...Let People Live Their Purpose!

Book - Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb

Book Description: Eager is a powerful story about one of the world’s most influential species, how North America was colonized, how our landscapes have changed over the centuries, and how beavers can help us fight drought, flooding, wildfire, extinction, and the ravages of climate change. Ultimately, it’s about how we can learn to coexist, harmoniously and even beneficially, with our fellow travelers on this planet.

Reflection:

After reading Eager, I'm honestly blown away at the impact that our tiny rodent friends have on our lives that we will most likely never see or even know. They are necessary creatures that have evolved over time to play a vital role and purpose in our ecosystem. I don't know why they do what they do, and frankly, I don't care.

My co-founder of ClubAny, Trieu, has a saying, "A Painter must Paint". He says it all the time, and I think I finally get what he means after reading this book. With beavers, I don't know why, but they evolved with a purpose to cut down trees and to dam up rivers. If a painter must paint; I guess a beaver must build dams. Doesn't make sense to me, but that's the point.

Maybe beavers had their own "I can't imagine" event as a species where some great drought left them with no water and a lot of them died. A few beavers that survived banded together and vowed to never let this happen again to their families. They now had a purpose and became mission driven to find a way to ensure their families always had access to life giving water in the future. Those purpose driven beaver survivors of the great drought, fueled by this purpose, miraculously invented a way to dam up streams to overcome this problem and ensure their species could survive and thrive. Maybe that is how it happened, but who really cares honestly. The end result is that they found a purpose that sustained their species to survive and thrive. That is the power of purpose.

Beavers didn't do it alone though, they had help. Through wolves living their purpose, fish living their purpose, trees living their purpose, elk living their purpose, etc; they were all able to find a way to live harmoniously, co-exist, and create a sustainable world together. It is through everyone living their purposes that we are all collectively able to find a way to grow and thrive.

We as humans, in my opinion, get ourselves in trouble all the time by trying to pick and choose which purposes matter and which don't. We try to force our will and purpose on this world and bend nature to our demands. It never works. You can't force your purpose on to others. No matter how hard you try, it just won't stick and it shouldn't. Your purpose is YOUR purpose alone. Our goal should be to do our best to understand each other's purpose (whether a fish, a beaver, a human, a tree, etc) and find ways to make it mutually beneficial so that we all thrive.

So stop trying to persuade or force others toward your purpose and start figuring out ways to understand, work together, and to lift everyone's purpose up.

Question: Are you forcing your purpose on others or helping others to amplify their purpose?

---

Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Eager

YOML Bookstore - Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb