There's that awkward moment when someone asks me "What do you do?"
I know that means "what do you do for money?" or "what's your job", and I haven't had a paying job since 1983; but that doesn't mean I don't "do" anything.
I would much prefer that people ask "what's your passion?" because I know the answer to that question.
My passion is for building the kind of a world I want to have, and that's what I do.
I do that these days in a couple of ways - one is by volunteering my time and effort to start a grocery cooperative in the rural county where I've lived for the past 30 years.
The UN has decreed 2012 to be the year of the cooperative, and predicts that cooperatives will be the fastest growing business sector in the coming years. Why am I passionate about the idea of cooperative businesses proliferating? Because cooperatives are the cure for the failings of our current economic system; because the cooperative structure is a revolution that can change the world without firing a single shot or dropping a single bomb.
If the problem is giant corporations controlling everything from food choices to job choices to who gets elected, cooperatives are definitely the answer - an answer easily available to all of us, and within our control.
People can band together and form a cooperative to fill any need they have, and by doing so take responsibility for themselves and empower their communities - all through a business structure which requires cooperation in order to succeed, and is inherently devoid of the greed and exploitation found in other business structures.
It's up to each of us to make our world what we want it to be - the cooperative structure allows us to do this in many areas of our lives, if we're willing to give the time and effort to make it happen.
Whatever your job, my question is "what's your passion?"
