This was one of those rare years in which Easter and Earth Day kissed each other at midnight. Did you notice? I felt it. I went from writing about and celebrating our eternal nature with my family on Sunday to honoring the precariousness and preciousness of our place in this world at work on Monday. But rather than this feeling like two contradictory days, for me it felt like one long 48 hour celebration of our humanity. It was an opportunity to abide in the Both/And. Yes, we are eternal… and yes, we may well be extinct tomorrow. Somehow, these two realities- the absolute and the relative- are deeply connected. I suspect that the secret to unlocking one lies in the other. We are not accustomed to thinking about it in this way. We tend to think we have to escape the relative (embodied life on earth) to attain the absolute (heaven or a pure state of spirit). But what if the only way to truly know and experience the absolute is through relative experience? Then what?
This article by Thich Nhat Hanh, the originator of the idea of interbeing, beautifully and succinctly captures possibly everything we need to know at this moment in time. I posted this in my FB feed on Earth Day. If you read it, it’s worth a second read. I think I have read it a few times now. If you didn’t get to it, this is your chance! For all others, enjoy!!
https://upliftconnect.com/falling-in-love-with-mother-earth/
My Earth Day started with this article first thing in the morning. It was the perfect centering for a day that I knew was going to be filled with a celebration of the work that our team at Prairie View A&M has been up to over my five years here. We have been working on affordable, net zero energy, resilient infill housing solutions for low-income, minority communities in Houston. The culmination of this work is The Fly Flat project. On Earth Day, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture and the American Institute of Architects announced that our team won an AIA Committee on the Environment Top Ten Student Design Award. The student competition mirrors the COTE Top Ten awards for architect’s built projects. It is the highest honor in sustainable design in our profession in this country. I am humbled by the power of this work and the impact that it is having in the world.
Yet there is a misconception floating around out there about me among those who don’t understand what I am up to. I usually just let this stuff go, but I am learning that sometimes it is helpful to be forthcoming about my intentions and to set the record straight. The misconception is that I am all about the win. It’s easy enough to deduce based on the fact that my students and I have won national competitions for the past five years in a row. The explanation is that I am “competitive” and “ambitious.” Well, sort of, but not really.
I am an athlete, so I most certainly have learned how to compete to win. I have also racked up more than enough wins for one lifetime. Yet it would be a mistake to assume that winning is or has been my overarching reality. I have way more losses in my pocket than wins. It would be an even bigger mistake to think that winning is what motivates me. Win over what??? In my worldview there is only me, myself and I…. extended out to infinity. There is no winning. There is only evolving. And we either evolve together or we devolve together. That’s it.
Yesterday we had a great speaker at our PVAMU Awards Ceremony. Marlon Hall is an anthropologist and artist who talked about the most important thing behind everything that we do in life. And that is- the why. If you know me well enough or have been one of my students I have no doubt tortured you with the 5 why’s game. It’s quite easy if you’d like to try it for yourself. It goes like this. If you want to get to the bottom of something- an emotion, a pattern, a thought, an action, a turn of events, etc.- start with a simple question. Why? Answer the question with whatever knee-jerk reaction that pops up. Then invoke your inner 5 year old to ask why of your why. Repeat 5 times.
Example: 1) Why do you go to work? I go to work in order to get paid. 2) Why do you need to get paid? I need to get paid in order to put a roof over my head and food in my belly. 3) Why do you need a roof over your head and food in your belly? I will die if I don’t have a roof over my head and food to eat! 4) Why will you die? I will die because I will be exposed to the elements, nobody else is going to house me or feed me, and nobody is going to take care of me! 5) Why do you think nobody will take care of you? Because we live in a society that doesn’t believe in taking care of each other. BONUS question 6) Why doesn’t society believe in taking care of each other? Because there isn’t enough to go around and so it’s every man for himself! Survival of the fittest rules the day!!
The 5 why’s gets us to the root cause. For the most part, we continue to play into a society that doesn’t fit our values because we were taught and believe that survival of the fittest is the law of the land. It isn’t. Nature doesn’t actually work that way. Nature cooperates. But I digress. We’ll come back to that at a later date. What I want to uncover here is my why. Why do I show up in the way that I do? Marlon taught us another trick to help us to get to our why. The trick is to come up with a life motto rooted in your why. Your motto should be formatted like this:
Verb
Noun
Preposition
Noun
Before I tell you my motto, let me tell you this. I am here on assignment. We are all here on assignment. That assignment has little to do with winning and everything to do with evolving. I am consciously aware of this in everything that I do. Like Marlon, I encourage everyone I encounter to gain awareness of their own unique why. I believe that your why (yes, YOURS!) is the key to the Universe. So, you want to know why I have won so many competitions over the past five years? It isn’t because I was trying to win. I have much bigger fish to fry. It is because I am trying to save the world. I have always been trying to save the world. Most would think this naive. But I know that I won’t save it alone and that it won’t be saved without me. So I take my assignments seriously and do the absolute best that I can. Now as for that why, here you go:
Hold
Space
For
Oneness
When you see that this is what I am doing, you will understand how I do it. Easter and Earth Day won’t kiss again until 2030. That is the year by which it is believed we need to have fully adjusted the course of humanity, if not sooner. Will we? Will we by then understand enough to know that Easter and Earth Day are two sides of the same coin? If so, there is some chance that we will live to experience them as one day. That day will come in the year 2057. I hope I live to experience that day. I will be 88 years old. What is your why? Let’s go, Earthlings!