“Parts of me feel our fair city and region is forgetting it’s soul, increasingly caught up in the new “speed” of things, anger and fear. I realize we have 3 choices… do nothing and watch it happen, simply complain and bemoan, or make a stand one person at a time… to reclaim a community where we know and engage our neighbours and the teachers of our kids, and other “minor” acts of courage. “The betterment of the world can be accomplished through pure and goodly deeds…”. We have an opportunity to redefine prosperity to mean not simply financial. Otherwise the “boom” is a cannon aimed at our very heart.”

With these words, posted to Facebook, I expressed a sentiment probably not so uncommon in communities around the globe; experiencing growth and the “Boom”. The Boom is not evil but what it can manifest has those qualities… a loss of courtesy and respect, conflict, contention and even apathy. With the supposedly inevitable speeding up of a boom society can come frustration and fear and futility; a sense that “What can you do?”

I might suggest that what we can do is redefine the Boom. What if prosperity included material and spiritual? What if prosperity inferred wealth and health? What if prosperity entailed how we treated one another as much as how much we make? I propose that prosperity does include all of these things and that what we have come to see as prosperity is a mere shadow, without substance. This is true in companies and on campuses, as well as communities as a whole.

So what can we do besides bemoan? It comes back to character and virtue and defining and aligning who we are with our actions. We reclaim our communities by reclaiming ourselves, our best selves. The work of The Virtues Project™ and our work at EPIC Engage™ centers on character as core to real growth and development. Our most consistent behaviours are born of our strength of character.

I suggest revisiting who you are and intend to be and use the language of virtue. Check out the global work of The Virtues Project™ and dig out the virtues. Decide on that for which you stand and make a stand. Your work, life and community depend on it.

Peace, passion and true prosperity.

Barry Lewis Green, aka The Unity Guy™