What If the Answer Was Always Love?

There's a question written somewhere on the back of a bathroom stall, uttered in between the things we say and the things we mean: What is the point of it all?

We build companies. We optimize, iterate and grow. We measure everything in return on investment. And somewhere in the relentless forward motion, we forget to ask, why?

This year Okeechobee gave us a portal of our own.

(Photo credit: @okeechobeefest & @darlingashj)

‘The Portal’

Okeechobee Music and Arts Festival is not just a festival. It is an invitation. Four days in the Floridian wilderness where tens of thousands of people come together to remember something they already know but that the noise of ordinary life makes easy to forget: that human connection is the point. That joy is worth protecting. That being human, truly human, is something worth celebrating.

This year's theme was "The Portal." A doorway from one state of being into another. The idea that transformation is possible, that you can walk into a space as one version of yourself and leave as something more.

It's a belief Humanitix is built on, applied not to a festival, but to the way business works. What if the transactions at the heart of capitalism didn't have to extract from communities, but rather gave back to them? What if a booking fee could do more? Give someone their eyesight back? Fund a classroom? Prevent malaria? Repair a fistula?

What if profit could be a portal too?

Not a destination. A passage. A way of moving through the ordinary machinery of commerce and arriving somewhere that actually matters.

When Okeechobee invited us to create an installation, we didn't have to think very hard about what it would be.

(Photo credit: Okeechobee Music and Arts Festival)

The Portal of Love

So we built one.

An archway threaded with thousands of paper hearts, hand-punched and stamped by our Denver team before the first tent was even pitched. By the end of the weekend, almost all of them had been claimed, written on with care and added to the portal.

“I promise to always love, because it's the only thing that conquers everything.”

“Love yourself, and all those around you.”

“Smile, it looks beautiful on you.”

Part of something larger than any single person who passed through.

(Photo credit: Okeechobee Music and Arts Festival)

Full Hearts

Twelve-hour travel days. Seven straight hours tying twine in the Florida heat before a single festival-goer arrived. Thirty-seven miles walked and danced across four days.

That's how Kierstin Rounsefell, Customer Success and Operations Lead spent her 4-year Humaniversary, on feet that kept moving because love isn't just a feeling. It is the act of showing up.

When the hearts were all hung and the portal was open, Kierstin and James Humpherson, Global General Manager of Humanitix, did the only thing you can do when you've built something you believe in.

They stepped back. And watched. As strangers wandered over and through the portal, reading what others had written. Reaching for a pen. Adding their own heart to hundreds of others. Again and again, across an entire weekend.

"Full hearts," Kierstin said.

It's a small phrase for something quite large.

That's Humanitix. The people who show up each day because they believe it matters. 100% of booking fee profits dedicated to healthcare, education and life's basic necessities. It's the same impulse as tying twine for seven hours in the Florida heat.

You show up. Because you believe in what you're building.

(Photo credit: Okeechobee Music and Arts Festival)

The Answer

Okeechobee was a first for us. Our first installation. Not as a ticketing platform, but as a statement. A portal of our own.

The universe is full of unknowns. But there is one thing we do know. The Portal of Love at Okeechobee only had one answer, written in nearly three thousand different hands.

We already know what matters. We've always known.

No matter the question, the answer is love.