Green – Renewal, Together – Hope!

Walking / cycling through Westland (NL) – People’s first associations to green are ‘start signal’ and of course nature, environment, harmony and …. health. Adversely green connects to jealousy, envy, misfortune. And also to youth, good luck, spring, fertility and – that makes me happy – vigor, renewal and … Christmas, hope!

Today I like to focus on vigor, renewal, hope. Vigor is the power to do something. Where does it come from? From what source? Let’s take a closer look … Example: take a plant or alga with cholorplasts. These chloroplasts have the power to do something: under the infuence of light(-energy) the plant or alga can live (i.e. produce sugar and oxigen out of carbondioxide and water). You could say that choroplasts cooperate with the photons (= light) to reach a certain goal: keep on producing new oxigen and sugars.

Cooperate. I believe individual people are ment to cooperate. Every human being has aptitudes and talents, a shape. This shape florishes extraordinary in the process of cooperation. Where does one learn to cooperate? In the Netherlands many primary schools apply cooperative learning …!

Here an example of what I learned about cooperation and cooperatives. My parents ran a greenhouse business in the Netherlands. Comprihensible they were a member of a buying cooperative and a selling cooperative. As a teenager I got interested in the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of being a member of a cooperative and visited an assembly of the members of the buying as well as the selling cooperative. I learned many, many things!! Buying and selling cooperative: cooperate with other members to (a) certain benefit(s). From that point the results served our individual interest … a kind of two grade rocket!

My conclusion: working in cooperation seemed to be a kind of mystery with three keywords: together, share and … communication. Three words quickly spoken, but sometimes very difficult in applying. Gather, meet, talk, deliberate, preparing decisions, make decisions, the after-talk … And keep on cooperating afterwards. With renewed vigor, new hope. Valuable … Essential!

Green. New hope out of sharing, cooperating and communication (an art in itself!). Curious …? Challenging …?

This post is also available in: Dutch