When we stand in Circle (and whatever circles we stand in, we all stand in at least one circle together), we don’t all need to face the same direction to face a common center. Ritual gives us a common language.
“Trickle-out economics” is my favorite kind: not up or down, but outward — from one person to others. We let someone in line, we hold a door, we do our best, we make someone else’s path a little easier, not for thanks but because the action itself builds, because what goes around comes around, not in some strict accounting where I’ve gotta be sure I get my share, but because we all drink the water and breathe the air. The Commons may not be a very popular idea right now, but it still exists nevertheless. And it exists every day, in ways I impact with my actions right now. Include the psychic spaces we live in and it’s very large and very accessible to the influence of each of us.
Fear is rarely productive of positive action. Whatever I can do to reduce fear in my life will help me make better decisions right now. It also makes life more fun. Whether it’s cutting back on media like endless news about political disfunction that doesn’t help me live well, or turning to media like good music that does, focusing on areas and ways I can act will keep me from squandering my energy and attention worrying about what everybody else is doing and thinking. Less fear in me also calms others around me.
Anything above .300 is a commendable batting average. We don’t need to be perfect. In fact, it’s usually easier to get better when we don’t aim for perfect but for improved. Meatloaf sings that “two out of three ain’t bad” but baseball says “one out of three is already pretty good.” Most things have a rule of thumb. Life mostly consists not of bending the rules in our favor but in finding rules that actually work often enough to be useful guides.
The natural world is a pretty good teacher. Its functions and systems have been in place longer than human civilizations, so they’re honed and refined to a high degree for fulfilling their own purposes and needs. Watching birds, clouds, water, trees, bugs and beasts go about their patterns and habits and lives teaches us valuable things because we’re part of the same system, built on a similar pattern, designed to function in comparable ways. Watching nature is also some of the best therapy you can get for free. There’s a reason for that fishtank in the doctor’s or dentist’s office.
Solwom wesutai syet — “may it be for the good of the whole” in reconstructed Proto-Indo-European* — ain’t a bad mantra at all. I use it in my own practice, and it helps keep me balanced. It doesn’t always fit every particular situation, but when it does, it connects me with a human life-way that’s proved its value over millennia.
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*sohl-wohm weh-soo-tie syeht. solwom — genitive plural of solwos “all, whole, entire”; wesutai — dative singular of wesuta good (abstract noun formed from wesu, su- “good”); syet — optative form of the verb esti “is” — “may it be.” “Of-all for-the-good may-it-be” — may it be for the good of all.
A Druid Way 
