Trust as a Muscle

The Beating Heart of Community

The heart is a muscle. As it contracts, it becomes a vortex—a spiraling of generative tension. It gives birth to the next beat. And in that same rhythm, when a community practices commitment pooling — such as the collective tending of land, livestock, and life—you can feel the spiral. Each act of helping, each gathering to lift another’s burden, summons the next act of care. A rhythm of mutual aid. A rhythm.

The heart is not only a pumping muscle. It’s a rhythm. It’s the dance of giving and receiving.

In this way, commitment pooling is more than lending each other goods and services. It is life’s tempo. And like the heart, when one beat falters, the next compensates. It is adaptive. It is living. It sets the condition for the next gesture of care.

Today, our social heart—our UbuNtu, our Becoming People—is under strain. The rhythm has slowed. We are communities held hostage by cash scarcity. Money, has captured the means of both exchange and nurture.

Like a heart attack, we feel this in the clutch of emergencies unmet, in the tightening grip of loans unpaid, in the isolation of abundance locked away. But what do we do when a heart stops?

Like in CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation), when a heart has stopped, we place our hands gently but firmly and begin to restore its rhythm.

We breathe life into it. We do for it what it cannot do for itself—until it can.

That’s what we can and must do in our communities and bio-regions. Even if it feels unfamiliar or awkward at first, we can become each other's lifeline. We can take turns massaging the social heart back into rhythm—offering presence, care, with the simple rhythm of our mutual support.

This is what countless community groups have always done. Quietly. Steadily. Over time, groups have helped communities remember how to save together, lend to one another, and pool for resilience. Each member contributes. Each member borrows. And at the end of the cycle, they share it all back.

There is a way to keep this rhythm going again beyond the limits of cash - as our ancestors taught us.

Instead of waiting for scarce currency, community members offer what they have: their promises and commitments. A commitment for tomatoes. A haircut. A future day's work.

These commitments, form a pool—a space of dynamic tension like a beating heart—where value circulates, with or without currency.

In Commitment Pools:

• Each person seeds the pool with what they can offer.

• Others borrow from that pool, not by taking—but by swapping in their own commitments. Reciprocity ensures the pool remains in integrity – so it can form the next beat in the cycle.

• And of course limits can be set (i.e. borrowing 3x what you contribute), and the community decides how to respond when someone is in need and can’t contribute—offering some access to the pool in care like a heartbeat extending itself in compassion.

The Duruma people of the Kenyan coast knew this rhythm and many still follow it. They would beat a horn through the Kaya—reminding all of the rhythm of their place, their people, their planet. The horn was not just a call to gather. It was a call to remember:

That we are on borrowed time.

That we owe much to the soil, to our ancestors, and to those yet unborn.

And so, we build the muscle again. Of our hearts. Of our homes. Of our societies.

Not with banknotes, but with our own trust.

Not with employment contracts, but with our own commitment.

We pulse. Together.

With love.