What are you wondering about these days? What are you struggling with? What is becoming clear to you?
My answer to all of these questions relates to a new book we’re writing, and to our ongoing search to identify the irreducible elements of identity — the qualities and dispositions that we need in order to preserve, protect, defend, champion, encourage and honor the human spirit (and to do so at this exact moment of decadence, division, and decline).
Towards that end, I just finished Margaret Wheatley’s new book, Who Do We Choose to Be (go read it!), and as I did, I jotted down some of the qualities that I think are element-al to our development of a healthy self and spirit.
As of this moment, these feel all or mostly right to me, meaning they are truly foundational to almost anything else that matters:
BELONGING
AWARENESS
LEVITY
COMPASSION
FREEDOM
JOY
AWE/REVERENCE/UNCERTAINTY/
MEANING
BALANCE
Then there are other qualities I jotted down that make me wonder if they are distinct or actually sub-properties of the former. For example —
HUMILITY (as a product of levity?)
COOPERATION (as an offshoot of belonging?)
VIGILANCE (as an indicator of awareness?)
GENTLENESS (as the inevitable result of compassion?)
And then there is everything else.
What I’m wondering is, what would YOU add, change or modify? Who do you feel we need to become in order to serve as Warriors of the Human Spirit — knowing that, once we have identified them, we can begin to recalibrate our schools, communities and organizations in order to help bring those qualities more fully into being?
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