Peter Buffett, son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, is an Emmy Award-winning composer, NY Times best-selling author and noted philanthropist. Currently, he is releasing socially-conscious music and touring his "Concert & Conversation" series in support of his book Life Is What You Make It .

 

When I was young, I remember being awestruck at the massive power of the Saturn V rocket as it lifted astronauts into space toward the moon. It took so much effort to get that rocket off the ground. But then I would see animations of what would happen once the stages had been cast off and just the top of the rocket, the Command and Service Modules, were in space. The maneuvering looked effortless.

Specifically, it took over 7.5 million pounds of thrust to get to the first 220,000 feet. Once in space, the Service Module needed about 100 pounds of thrust to change position.

Every day we live our lives in the gravitational pull of our belief systems. And every one of them starts from the inside out, trailing back generations often without our knowledge. My parents made lifelong decisions based on how they were raised, and I did the same. Modes of behavior were formed based on what I believed about myself and the world around me. As invisible as gravity, these definitions regarding who I was and what I could become created a pull that seemed as inevitable as the earth turning on its axis. If I were born into another family ... or in a far off culture ... my center of gravity would have been completely different but just as strong.

We need to create meaning out of everything we encounter. It tells us who we are and what we need to do to navigate in our environment. There is quite a bit of evidence that says that everything happens about a half a second earlier than we perceive it. And in that half a second, our body and mind create the reality that makes sense for us based on everything we know. We are constantly telling ourselves a story. And as our story becomes stronger through time and experience, its pull can become nearly impossible to escape from.

Everything we experience becomes a story we’re deciding to believe. 

That doesn’t mean that outside forces don’t count. The economy that we have collectively bought into has created crushing poverty for billions. But that poverty comes from a system that promotes massive inequality, and defines poverty on its terms. It doesn’t have to be this way.

This is why escape velocity requires so much effort. While it’s possible for some to wake up and dramatically shift their circumstance by changing their story. For many, it will take all 7.5 million pounds of thrust, which translates to a collective shift in priorities, one person at a time.

What I’m talking about is a (r)evolution—remembering that we actually share a common space—both on this earth and in our hearts. Once we escape the pull of old stories and long held beliefs that no longer serve our common humanity, it will take very little effort to correct our course. Just like the Service Module in space, a small adjustment is all it will take to stay on course once love and compassion are guiding the ship.

We’re trapped in the false gravitational pull of a political structure, an economic system, and definitions of power and control that on the surface seem impossible to change.

But it is possible. We got to the moon in a decade. Why can’t we get to our hearts in a minute?

Visit www.peterbuffett.com andChange Our Storyto learn more. 

Public domain image of Saturn V rocket courtesy of NASA 

Peter Buffett, son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, is an Emmy Award-winning composer, NY Times best-selling author and noted philanthropist. Currently, he is releasing socially-conscious music and touring his "Concert & Conversation" series in support of his book Life Is What You Make It . 

 

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” – Carl Jung 

One of the reasons we keep repeating the same stories is because it’s so difficult to look at our role in perpetuating the disconnection—and pain that accompanies it—that keep the old stories alive.

Whether it’s on a macro or micro level, looking in the mirror can be difficult. Take a trip to the Pine Ridge Reservation (or any nearby prison) and then talk about American exceptionalism. Go through a difficult divorce or failed business relationship and talk about your role and responsibility in the breakup. It’s hard. And your friends and allies will rarely tell you anything other than what they think you want to hear. Of course, they’re trying to make you feel better—but are they helping?

You can guess my answer to that question ... no.

So where do we turn if we want to make the next step in our journey a little more fulfilling, a little more true, and ultimately, a lot more joyful?

Well, it’s going to start with vulnerability. That quality in ourselves that we started to cover up the minute things started to hurt. Little humiliations, big failures. They all played a role in how we built walls around the things we didn’t want to look at or thought we wouldn’t have to think about.

“Ignore it and it will go away” may have worked with an annoying bully in school, or a mosquito bite, but in life the words ignore and ignorance are just too closely related. We can no longer afford to turn a blind eye towards our role in the world we create. We must open our hearts to the pain that accompanies the first steps into vulnerability with the willingness to see ourselves as the creators of the story we inhabit—all of it.

Visit www.peterbuffett.com and Change Our Storyto learn more. 

Image courtesy ofPaul Keller, licensed under Creative Commons. 

Peter Buffett, son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, is an Emmy Award-winning composer, NY Times best-selling author and noted philanthropist. Currently, he is releasing socially-conscious music and touring his "Concert & Conversation" series in support of his book Life Is What You Make It . 

 

I helped bury a friend’s dog last week. I’d never personally buried an animal that I was so close to. I had never sat with someone I knew so well as they lost the animal that got them through so many emotional points in their life.

This dog had absorbed so much pain and joy from my friend. He was his trusted link to life. So when he became ill, my friend had to look outside his insular world built around him and his dog and realize that he had a community of friends that wouldn’t abandon him ... friends—and a life—he could trust.

You see, my friend lost his father in a plane crash when he was a child. His world—his story of family and safety and trust—was shattered. Another father figure entered his life and began to abuse him in ways too awful to describe.

My friend created a well-deserved cocoon for himself and his beliefs hidden safely away from the outside world.

The vet that heard my friend cry ... scream ... in anguish over the loss of this dog had no idea where the depths of the cry came from. But I did. I heard a boy losing his father, losing his innocence, and losing everything that he thought was real in an instant. And then if that wasn’t enough, more pain to penetrate to the core of his deepest wound. In his cry I began to hear crying children everywhere, shattered by an event—death, abuse, rape, abandonment— all traumas that can break a soul.

And I thought right then, as I saw life leave the dog and heard the primal screams from my dear friend. What do we know about anyone? How can we possibly judge any action we don’t fully understand? Every person’s story has a depth and complexity to it that deserves deep respect and full attention if we’re going to base any judgment or action of our own on someone else’s behavior.

The vet had no clue where the depth of my friend’s cries came from. Fortunately, she was a sensitive soul. Maybe she recognized the sound. I certainly had no idea what her story was. In fact, I was already assuming (as I still am) that she couldn’t understand. Maybe she knew exactly what those cries meant because she had cried similar tears.

We just don’t know unless we take the time and suspend our own story long enough to hear someone else’s. And even then, it’s imperfect. We can all agree on certain things, but ultimately, reality is completely and utterly subjective.

No story is the only story. But there is one common element. Love. And every story is just trying to find its way back to the safety found in love.

7 billion versions of them.

Visit www.peterbuffett.com andChange Our Storyto learn more. 

Peter Buffett, son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, is an Emmy Award-winning composer, NY Times best-selling author and noted philanthropist. Currently, he is releasing socially-conscious music and touring his "Concert & Conversation" series in support of his book Life Is What You Make It . 

 

Where is truth? How do we find it? How do we know it?

“How Would You Know” by Peter Buffett
(Peter is giving this song away to Utne readers—click here for your free download!)

I wrote this song as yet another plea for questioning and answering. And when I was finished, I thought that it could use some sound bites. I’ve always loved to put together sound collages. My favorite is the "Urban Overture" from my show Spirit – The Seventh Fire. In it, I tried to create the sound of America going from what I called “analogue invention to digital consumerism.” Here’s a montage from the show.  

When I started to comb the internet for sound bites, I began to see a pattern emerge. Our presidents from at least Reagan forward (they’re the easiest ones to find on YouTube!) were saying many of the same things. It became relatively easy to weave a narrative together (punctuated by commercial interruptions) that had an eerie "we’ve seen this before" quality. 

In some ways, they were almost completing each other's sentences. What is going on here? As you know from other posts, I’m a big fan of Mark Twain’s quote, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” Well, I’d like to end this particular poem and move on.

And so I keep writing essentially the same song and the same blog post until I get it right. Until we get more people singing the same tune … a new tune.

Recently I posted a thought on my Facebook page:

It's estimated that 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day. Instead of thinking, "oh my god ... that's terrible" - which is a totally rational thing to think, what if instead we thought, "how can the rest of us get to that point?"   

We have to turn this system inside out. Start with the heart, not the bank account. Start with power with, not power over. Start with feeling, not logic.

Start with remembering that each one of us is a perfect metaphor for all of us, made up of individual cells, all knowing their purpose and carrying it out by being perfectly themselves. The problems start when the cells forget their purpose and start to grow and divide uncontrollably as if there is no end to their hunger for growth and destruction.

The expected growth we see in government and economic sectors is impossible to sustain … it's cancer-like.

“Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical, on a physically finite planet, is either mad or an economist.” ― Kenneth E. Boulding  

Visit www.peterbuffett.com andChange Our Storyto learn more. 

Image courtesy of dddagg, licensed under Creative Commons.