Laura Grayson referred Will to participate here several months ago and at that time Will asked me to reach out to him again "after September", when his schedule might afford him a little extra time. And so I did and he was kind enough to put me on the calendar. We met in a conference room at the Ruffwear and Embark headquarters, where Will serves as the President. This was actually our second meeting — our first being a couple of weeks earlier to chat about another photography project — so I had some idea of what chatting with Will was like and, because of that first interaction, I was really looking forward to this conversation. True to the one form I have come to understand of him, Will chatted with me with patience and attentiveness and offered his perspective on the subjects below with care and sincerity. To say I enjoyed taking with Will would be a severe understatement. Something about the way he says it makes what he has to say resonate with me. I am so grateful to have had this conversation with him face to face and it's an honor to share it with you here.
WB: My name is Will Blount. I'm a 46-year-old man that happens to be a son, a father, a brother, a husband. But those are ultimately just different roles that I've played and I'm realizing that I'm really a multi-dimensional person that I'm still getting to know — getting to look inside and learn. And I recognize I'm evolving, as well. That's exciting for me. I sometimes consider myself a navigator. I like the analogy of being on a river and helping people find the line so that they don't get flipped in a hole or eddied out into a rock. I'm inspired my movement, this idea of flow of energy, and staying in the current.
ACT: What concerns you about the state of the world and humanity — our interactions with each other — in a way that affects you personally? And what motivates or inspires you to do something about it?
WB: I recently heard this saying from a tribal elder — Mankind has to come too far. And I think it's around this idea that we have been so innovative that we've lost our connection to nature. We've lost our connection to ourself. And so, recognizing that while we might have had positive intentions, we have exceeded our capacity to stay connected to those around us and to ourselves. And I think it plays out a lot... if you look at the environment, for one. That's hard for me to see what we're doing to our living planet — our home, our mother. We need to just take a breath and recognize, Where is this serving us? Where do we use this great creative gift that we have of intelligence? And use that to mimic what is happening in the form of nature around us. If we're gonna progress and evolve, that's the best thing to follow. We look at how these systems are really integrated to support a healthy ecosystem.
What inspires me is also some of what we are learning as well as biomimicry, as a way to be more efficient in capturing light into a building. My children inspire me. I look at my generation — I grew up with parents that were from the South — Birmingham, Alabama. I look at my grandfather and my father and my generation — we're way less racist as a generational family. My children have it figured out. They're much more open and accepting of others. I go back two generations and I don't think that was the case. So, I see a lot of good happening. I think that even in the last 50 years there's been a lot of amazing progress.
I had the privilege to float on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho last summer. We were celebrating the 50th year of the Wild and Scenic River Act. It's this remote place where wildlife is thriving. You'd be sitting on, what you call on the river the groover, which is an outdoor toilet — on a bucket — and you look down river and you see bald eagles flying up the river way and river otters playing and dancing. So, I see a lot of really amazing things and that inspires me to want to be a better person, as well.
ACT: This idea of coming too far or losing touch conjures up feelings of judgment in me about productivity and the pursuit of money and the accumulation of material objects. How do you reconcile that while maintaining inspiration and that good faith and hope?
WB: It's been a journey for me to try to really get clear why it is I do what I do. Early in my work career, I was very motivated to help build and grow a company that would be turned around and sold. The selling of the organization would be the accomplishment, right? It was validated by someone else willing to buy it and put their money behind it. And today, fast forward 18 years later, that doesn't inspire me. That doesn't motivate me. What wakes me up early and motivates me to stay up late is the people that are coming to work every day to help contribute to a common goal. And they're doing it with their own unique talents and abilities. And they're thriving and they're growing. The tribe is stronger than the individual ego that once was for me. That's super rewarding. Getting clear of why I do what I do and recognizing, yeah, there's a certain amount of money that I need to afford a lifestyle I've become accustomed to, but that's not why I do it anymore. I don't need that validation from an external source. It's really now, for me, coming from within.
ACT: We all might be better off if we could adopt that. I struggle with the idea of wanting the same for myself or others wanting the same for what they do, but being trapped in a cycle that is perpetuating a frantic pace of having to keep up or lose. For some it might be very real — keep up or lose your job or lose your marriage. I want to believe that it's a choice and you can decide to opt out of it, but sometimes it feels like we are really just stuck. It feels very complicated. And sometimes I wonder if only a few people get to decide.
WB: I don't think we can escape the human experience. And I think it's a shared experience. There's this great quote by Wavy Gravy — We're all just bozos on the bus, so we might as well sit back and enjoy the ride. We're all going through it one form, shape, or the other. I think that's where being able to recognize that what might be happening for someone that has a million dollars in the bank account or a hundred million or a billion isn't that much different at the end of the day from someone that might not. They're still going through the challenges.
I am fortunate and I recognize I have a lot of privilege in my life. I was born healthy. I'm a white man. I'm six foot two. I've got all these advantages that other people didn't necessarily have. Recognizing that is part of my role to ensure that I honor that. I can use those benefits to perhaps help others in a way where they weren't fortunate to have the same set of situations. Ultimately, though, fear is a powerful force and I think that it gets used and abused in ways that create a narrative in our own lives that is really quite separate from who we really are at the end of the day. And we can get caught up in it so easily. There's really wonderful people that have done a lot of bad things because they just get caught up in that. And I'm no exception to that. And being able to stop and reflect on that helps me recognize that I have more work to do — and that it's my work; it's not something that is going to be done for me. And that's also exciting because it gives me a sense of ownership and control and power that I have the ability to create a new situation, a new environment, and I can do it with somewhat unplugging from what we hear, what we see, what we're fed through various news outlets and stories that really pull us way from who we really are. So, for me it's really, once again, getting more familiar with myself and recognizing, Who is the authentic Will and what do I need to be doing to make sure that my voice is being heard in a way that aligns with that authenticity?
ACT: What do other people mean to you?
WB: I'm learning that other people really are a mirror. Right? They provide a reflection back to me. And so, it's this opportunity to learn something. I've been very fortunate to have a loving family and parents and two amazing children and a wife that help me recognize my beauty, my gifts, but also help me recognize when I'm out of alignment with that. People are an opportunity for this self reflection — to learn and grow, get to know myself better. I'm learning that when I'm triggered by someone, it's something that is triggered within myself. I'm now stopping to take a moment and go, What is really going on there for me? It's not you; it's me. How do I change that, turn it within, and show up in a way that isn't based on this limbic fight, flight, or freeze syndrome that we all come from? We are basically descendants of the most paranoid people of Earth. You look at our ancestors and those that didn't run at the slightest sound were eaten by a lion or killed by something. We've got that built into our genetic biology that that's the way we need to show up. But nowadays, walking down the street, we're not gonna be mauled by a bear, necessarily. It's this opportunity to connect and learn more about myself. And I get to be amazed at what they're creating themselves; we're co-creating this together. They're partners in this manifestation of our bliss, our aliveness. And we get to ride that wave together through the peaks and the troughs — the joys and the hardships. And I share that with them.
ACT: If community is our relationships with one another and the world we live in and if it's those relationships that matter most to people, why are we having such a difficult time getting along and considering everybody's needs? I see so much pain and I feel so much pain and I cause so much pain but I just don't understand why. Do you have thoughts on that?
WB: I think for the most part we're asleep. We're so caught up in everything around us. The speed at which information and the amount of information that is being streamed into our lives every millisecond of every moment is overwhelming us. Our internal circuitry wasn't designed for the rate at which we're getting this and we're starting to shut down. We're starting to fall asleep because we're overwhelmed. Overload — it's like the computer; it needs more processing power. When we start to awaken and we start to be very careful with the type of information we let in, the type of people that we hang out with, the choices that we make around substance abuse to further numb us, to further keep us in that sleep state, causing us to feel disconnected from ourselves. The separation that we have with our living planet — Pachamama, Mother Earth — makes us feel disconnected. That's a real root cause. When we are disconnected, we start to lash out because we're not balanced; we're not grounded. We're this frenetic energy. It's like trying to play an instrument that's out of tune. We're out of tune as a society, as members within the society.
And there's also some amazing examples of cultures and communities that don't feel that way. In the advancement of technology for the pursuit of who knows what, we've lost our way. We've fallen asleep and disconnected from ourselves in the process. And I think that gets projected outwards. We don't see the world the way it is; we see the way we project into it. And if we don't know what's going on within, we don't know what's going on. And that's where disagreements and anger and hatred and fear get generated. How can you be at peace with another if you're not at peace with yourself? How can you love another if you don't love yourself? It's just impossible. You can't do it.
ACT: I used to ask here about hope for a better future, but now I'm more into this idea that a better future is about accepting responsibility and doing the work. Will we do that? Or will we continue on this path that seems to be heading towards devastation?
WB: I'll go back to this idea that you started with — that is the word hope itself. This idea of hope is really saying that things should be different than they already are. And that in itself creates separation. That creates a lot of judgment — externally, but as I have come to believe, it's really internal judgment. That doesn't mean that you don't wish for or work towards changing things in a way that creates a higher vibration amongst the community and society. I really think the question is, How does change start to occur? And for me, once again, it gets pointed back inwards. If I can really be in the present and I can be okay with everything as it is in this moment, that's the first step. Because that's the way it is. There's no changing that.
There's no fighting the reality of the present moment. Everything in the past has happened. Everything in the future is yet to come. So, let's drop this angst and frustration that things need to change because they're not. They're the way they are. That's okay. Now, if I can recognize that, I can be in your company without all of these preconceived ideas of how this interview should be different, then we can get somewhere. We can really talk. And I can understand what's going on for you. You can understand what's going on for me. And that's where I think we find common ground. We're always making stories up to try to fill in our narrative because we've got to operate from this place where we think we know what's going on. When the reality is we probably don't.
There is a part of me that still really wants to believe things need to be different. Being a parent has such incredible lessons. I've got a teenager now. And I worry that sometimes as a teenager she's making decisions for herself that aren't gonna serve her. And so when I experience a situation as a parent, I can come at it from two different ways: you did this wrong or this is just part of her ongoing learning journey. And it's recognizing that she is where she needs to be and that's perfect in itself. And I'm there to provide the support that she needs when those times align for her. But I can't force her to change. I can only change myself and I believe that gets reflected back into her.
I agree with you that there are opportunities for us to do better as these really powerful manifestors of what we're creating around us. But how that happens is the distinction for me. I really believe it's all internal. If you can change yourself and everything is in some way, shape, or form connected, you're gonna change a lot of things. If I can change myself, I'm gonna change, but I can't change you and you can't change me. And so, for me to get frustrated about what you're doing doesn't do anything; it just makes you probably feel worse and you want to push back. The harder you push into something, the harder it pushes back. It seems like this universal law of balance. And so, let's figure out a different way to go about creating change. And I think that starts within.
ACT: Do you have a sense of purpose?
WB: Not one sense of purpose. I have things that make me feel more alive as an individual. And I am learning how to tune into those signals and follow all of that — those lessons that are within. My sense of purpose, in a way, is to continue to be more in tune with myself as an individual and to learn how to follow my bliss and create things that seem to awaken that powerful person within.
I've been doing a lot of reading and exploring different religions and spiritual practices and what's fascinating is if you go back thousands of years and you look at these different mythologies that cultures across the planet have — this is at a time when there's no modern technology, there's no modern communication between these people — you find very similar themes, very similar story lines. It might be Jesus or it might be the Buddha or what have you, but ultimately they're saying the same thing. And I believe that is coming from this idea of one — we're all part of broader consciousness that is more connected than it is separate. I think that that sense is shared within all of us. If we can be still and silent enough to listen, I think that it comes within. I think that's true for all of us. We're just not necessarily listening to that; we're listening to the external environment and that clouds our own understanding of what's happening within ourselves.
ACT: Do you have any closing thoughts?
WB: I just want to thank you for doing this work. Your motivation and your drive to approach something outside of some kind of financial reward is an honor to witness. The conversations we've had, while still brief, give me hope that we still have the ability to communicate and connect as individuals. It's inspiring me to want to figure out how to put aside the mile-long to-do list and sit down with a colleague and really get to know them — What are they thinking? What are they coming from? It's an inspiration.