I have a friend who is fortunate enough to have multiple homes and the freedom to travel almost at will. Her life, like all of ours, hasn’t been without its share of grief, betrayal or hardship. But she has transcended those moments, as we all have.

I often say that simply by being here, by remaining and continuing, we are living proof of possibility. Every moment we’ve faced, we’ve moved beyond.

One of the luxuries she enjoys is snowbirding— traveling south during the winter months to avoid the harsh cold of the Upper Midwest. It’s a practical move, but also a comical one at times.

I remember a particularly rare Southern snowstorm in Mississippi and Louisiana, where more than four inches of snow fell unexpectedly. It brought everything to a halt. 

Interstate 10 in New Orleans shut down. People were stunned, muttering things like, “I didn’t move here for this. I came south to avoid it.”

Snow in winter is expected—perhaps not in New Orleans, but certainly somewhere across America. Winter happens. 

It visits us wherever we are above and below the equator, with its varying temperatures, ice or snow. We might lament it, but deep down, we know it belongs to the season.

But here’s the paradox: while we might begrudge the weather, we don’t think it is strange.

Yet when we encounter strawberries in December or avocados in March, we don’t bat an eye. We’ve normalized it. 

We’ve rehearsed our way into what I call the “grocery store mentality,” where the availability of anything at any time feels like a natural right. We’ve created a framework where we believe the seasons don’t matter, where we can override natural rhythms in pursuit of perpetual abundance. 

The Grocery Store Illusion

This isn’t wealth, nor is it power. It is more like an abuse or manipulation of power.

Real wealth might look more like having the freedom to grow and nurture in harmony with nature, remembering that we, too, are part of this symbiotic framework. Imagine a force acting against you, forcing you into an unnatural relationship so you can exist for someone else’s amusement—ensnared, enslaved or captured.

In fairness, human innovation—our ability to adapt, create, and problem-solve—has often been a survival tool. But we don’t need to rob or oppress to survive. And yet, we believe we do. The systems we trust telegraph this idea constantly.

The issue arises when the stories we tell ourselves about these innovations obscure the facts beneath them. I’d much rather wait for strawberries in spring and go to that dependable restaurant in Little Rock famous for its strawberry shortcake. 

What I love about them is they make you wait. There is no strawberry shortcake in September.

This is what I call “softwareness”: the programming of our collective psyche to confuse what’s manufactured with what’s natural, to believe that the systems we’ve created are immutable, hardwired truths. We rehearse these illusions until they feel like reality, but they remain soft—designed, manipulated, and malleable.

And the real danger? These illusions are so well-funded and well-rehearsed they seduce us into living by them, often without question.

It’s not inherently wrong to enjoy the fruits of human ingenuity, but the grocery store is also a metaphor for how we live. We’ve conditioned ourselves to believe we can have fruit all year—whether it’s strawberries, productivity or economic growth. And when winter comes—when the natural cycle of rest or dormancy appears—we feel blindsided, as if something has gone wrong.

And just like that, even on our jobs, our bosses feel entitled to us every moment—unfettered access in chaos, as if we are grocery store products waiting to be picked at any time. Such is the pervasiveness of malignant wealth. 

It can become so addictive that we force each other into dire straits to avoid the personal discomfort we might experience in the critical and relevant need for winter.

But isn’t winter simply part of the rhythm? What if the barrenness we feel isn’t failure but an invitation to see what is real and what is manufactured? 

A Long Avoided Winter in America

We are in a long avoided winter in America. For generations, we told ourselves a story about democracy. 

In this story, every vote carried more weight than dollars, where the collective voice of the people could steer the ship of governance. But what happens when there are more dollars than people? What happens when one percent of the population holds more wealth than the remaining ninety-nine percent combined?

On voting day, it’s true: one person, one vote. But here’s the catch—there are 364 other days when your money and influence speak the loudest. And in that reality, those with the dollars, the ones crafting the system to their advantage, are working overtime to keep you tethered to a narrative that hides the deeper truths.

They’ve manufactured stories, distractions and needs designed to make you forget where your real access to power lies.

This is the crux of softwareness: the careful engineering of a reality where we’re so preoccupied with the offerings of the grocery store, so focused on what’s being sold to us, that we don’t even think to step outside and plant our own seeds. And the moment we stop needing what they’re selling, the system cracks.

The truth is this: the hardware of our systems—capitalism, democracy, governance—has always been shaped by the software of imagination. And the software? That’s written by those who dare to dream and direct the world toward their vision.

Right now, that direction has been dominated by those who use their imagination to consolidate power. But they don’t own imagination. And that changes everything. 

They Don’t Own The Rights To Imagination 

Here’s the golden nugget in all this: despite the vast fortune and influence these engineers of illusion wield, they don’t own imagination. They would like us to think they do. They’d like us to believe that their marketing strategies, policy manipulations and curated narratives are the only possible vision of the future.

But imagination is an infinite cosmic resource. It belongs to no one and everyone simultaneously. 

No matter how much wealth is amassed or how many narratives are bankrolled, no one can monopolize the human capacity to dream, to innovate and to envision a world beyond the constructs we’ve inherited. Every individual carries the seed of imagination within them. 

Imagination is one of the most natural and renewable energies we possess. It’s the quiet force that can re-script the so-called unchangeable, the living water that can rejuvenate a barren landscape.

Imagination allows us to pause and question: Should strawberries really be available in December? Is this truly the best way to live?

And when we begin to ask those questions, we reclaim a power that no grocery store, billionaire or system of oppression can take from us.

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