It’s Thursday night in a town hall in Brixton, South London. Hundreds of people mill around, steel drums play, bottles of fizzy ginger are generously given away. In this time of giant banks and an insistently globalised economy, I am here to celebrate the launch of the Brixton Pound: England’s fourth local currency. While most of us assume the future of banking is plastic and online, there is a strong energetic push in the opposite direction. In Brixton, as in Totnes, Lewes and Stroud, you can hold in your hands distinctly unique paper notes; in this case, they convey the area’s identity by way of its key historical characters, local architecture and other familiar sights. Fostering a sense of vibrant interdependence, this is money which, as the slogan states, sticks to the community. Complementary currencies like these are experiments, causing us to perk up our ears and consider the fundamental workings of a system – in this case, our economy.

Earlier in the day, I eat at Tibits, a vegetarian buffet restaurant off Regent Street where you pay according to how much your food weighs. It’s an oasis of delicious, conscious dining in a landscape of frenetic eat-as-much-as-you-want, buy-one-get-one-free cheap offers. Here resources literally count and waste is minimal, unusual in this age where we rarely assess how much a thing truly costs. Someone once said to me: “Only dead fish go with the current”. This day in London, I feel that I move from one interesting undercurrent to another, bypassing the mainstream flow. The true spirit of an age often lives just underneath the radar.

Why do we sometimes get like dead fish? Why do we go unthinkingly with a current? I suspect it’s because we forget about the human capacity to choose. To stop, to be discerning, to say: “Hang on, is this what I want? Is this what makes sense?” To recognise our own significance and know that if we want our life, our world, to go in a certain direction, then we need to turn our eyes that way. No matter how strong a current feels, we have the power of choice, the power of directional, decisive action. As Einstein said, “Any fool can make things bigger, more complex. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction”.

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

1) From what you notice in the news, in conversations, in the environment around you, in adverts, in your own habits, which trends don’t sit well with you?

2) Likewise, which currents do you feel are taking your life and our world in directions you’re delighted about?

3) Crank up the element of choice. If you got to direct the current of your life, where would it take you? If you got to direct the current of our society, where would you take us?

4) Finally, if you were to abandon all deadfishness, what would your role be in all this? How would you claim your power of choice and get into action? Action: Seek out individuals and groups whose undercurrents you want to slip in with and join with them. And, of course, make some powerful undercurrents of your own.

Found this post challenging? Helpful? Inspiring? Irritating? Leave a comment and let us know.

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009

* Hello! Your Idea Is Needed!

My guess is that you have an idea for a project, product or service that would nudge us in an interesting new direction. Well, it’s time to start that current.

If you want to explore your idea with other inspirational people, join us for the Kickstart Your Venture workshop on Saturday 24th April in Cambridge. If you’d love some one-to-one attention, some time and space just for you and your dreaming, book a free coaching consultation. You also might like to read Emma’s case study; when so many people were clinging on to job security, she took a brave leap against the current and into more fulfilling work. Read her story here.