I don’t think it’s pie in the sky to imagine that we can create incentives to nurture a gift economy that runs right alongside the market economy.

To name the world as gift is to feel your membership in the web of reciprocity.

They quickly cite access to open-source software and the existence of Wikipedia as manifestations of a gift economy, where knowledge is freely shared on digital platforms in an information commons.

I’ve long believed that the ones who have more joy win.

The currency of relationship can manifest itself as money down the road, because Paulie and Ed do have to pay the bills. Free berries might translate to better pumpkin sales, because people will want to come back to a place they have a relationship with. “People feel like they got something more than they paid for,” she explained. “They learned abo

and I can see how my delight levitates her, too.

Our oldest teaching stories remind us that failure to show gratitude dishonors the gift and brings serious consequences.

Instead of changing the land to suit their convenience, they changed themselves. Eating with the seasons is a way of honoring abundance, by going to meet it when and where it arrives.

This abundance of berries feels like a pure gift from the land. I have not earned, paid for, nor labored for them. There is no mathematics of worthiness that reckons I deserve them in any way. And yet here they are—along with the sun and the air and the birds and the rain,