The Island of Self

I just got back from a tech­no­rati search under key­word, “lead­er­ship.” There were 86,586 entries to con­sid­er, and yet as I thumbed through them I kept hear­ing that old line from a Bruce Spring­steen song about cable tele­vi­sion: “there was fifty-sev­en chan­nels and noth­in’ on.”

After vis­it­ing a few sites that expressed great anger because it is inau­gu­ra­tion day, and many oth­ers that seemed focused in con­tent more on the absence of lead­er­ship rather than its cre­ation, I felt I had to take a walk in the hills, metaphor­i­cal­ly speaking.

I first came across a ref­er­ence to a new web­site on peace­ful soci­eties. There and on the site itself, I read about the G/wi peo­ple who live in the Kala­hari Desert of cen­tral Botswana in Africa:

“Beliefs that Fos­ter Peacefulness. 

N!adima, the supreme being of the G/wi, is the all-pow­er­ful cre­ator of the uni­verse and of all life, a remote, omni­scient being who does not nec­es­sar­i­ly inter­vene to help peo­ple. G//amama, on the oth­er hand, is a mean-spir­it­ed deity who show­ers irri­tabil­i­ty, mis­un­der­stand­ing, mis­for­tune, and dis­ease among humans. Geo­graph­i­cal­ly iso­lat­ed in the Kala­hari, and remote as they are from N!adima, the G/wi achieve secu­ri­ty pri­mar­i­ly from their own social acts. Their har­mo­nious human rela­tions coun­ter­bal­ance the lone­li­ness of the uni­verse. Har­mo­ny among humans is the prac­ti­cal result, as well as the dom­i­nat­ing val­ue, that the G/wi derive from their world­view. Their word for human, khwe-, implies friend­li­ness, gen­eros­i­ty, wis­dom, calm­ness, and good humor. A per­son with­out these qual­i­ties, by def­i­n­i­tion, is inhuman.”

It always feels like syn­chronic­i­ty — mean­ing­ful coin­ci­dence — to open a book ran­dom­ly and find a pas­sage that speaks direct­ly to an inner state. That, for me, was the line about human rela­tions coun­ter­bal­anc­ing the lone­li­ness of the universe.

I kept walk­ing. I found a ref­er­ence to a talk by Thich Nhat Hanh, the famous Bud­dhist monk nom­i­nat­ed by Mar­tin Luther King in 1967 for the Nobel Peace Prize. In the talk he describes a time as a young man when he sought to climb a moun­tain to see the her­mit who lived on top. He did­n’t find the her­mit, but alone in the for­est he found a well of clear and refresh­ing water which sat­is­fied him com­plete­ly. He goes on in the talk to remind us that such a well is poten­tial­ly always avail­able through the Bud­dha’s teach­ing that we all car­ry a place of peace with­in. It is the teach­ing of “the island of Self.”

I took a long drink from the well before return­ing to those 86, 586 entries. One line in Thich Nhat Han­h’s talk par­tic­u­lar­ly stood out to me:

“I insist that the amount of free­dom you enjoy can be mea­sured by the amount of under­stand­ing and com­pas­sion that you have in your heart.”

Seemed very appro­pri­ate to the day.