Robert Reich, Failure and Resilience, and Carving Out Your Own Life's Path

Professor Robert Reich, a professor at 2 of my alma maters (previously at Brandeis Heller School, now at UC Berkeley), takes advantage of the final Wealth & Poverty class of the semester to help graduating undergraduate students frame an understanding of what their futures may hold, and the resiliency tools necessary to navigate life.  Take a gander here:

Reich's UC Berkeley Wealth and Poverty Final Class of Semester May 2016

Creating Your Life

The 'career spiral' replaces the 'career ladder.'  The skills set required to navigate the world becomes wide and deep, and complexly varied.  Since I'm what could probably be considered 'mid-career,' I think I can testify to this. Of course, I leapt wildly forth from Berkeley a couple of decades ago, determined not to get boxed in, to create my own path, to envision a world and work I wanted to manifest in the world, and work towards that--iteratively and responsively, intuitively, creatively, yet guided by some fundamental principles and values for the dignity of life (all life) and the potential harmony and beauty of which we are all a part.  And so far, that is how I've carved out my path, with some mis-steps and re-takes along the way, all of which provided invaluable lessons for me. Mine was an unconventional path at the time-- and beautifully, in my opinion, this kind of undefined trajectory is becoming more common.  The potential of what we create together opens up so much more inclusively, thoughtfully, and varyingly, when we must remain engaged in our paths -- we cannot sleepwalk through the decades of our lives!


"The obstacle is the path"

Another very important message Reich gives in his lecture is, "You will fail." Let me say that again, "you will fail."
When I was a child with extremely perfectionist tendencies, I thought my mother was being a terrible person when she told me I had to learn to fail. My childlike, 'why would you want me to FAIL???' evolved into gratitude for my mother, who taught me to allow life to get messy sometimes, to roll with the punches, to pick myself up and dust myself off.  Worst case scenarios for kids growing up in difficult circumstances, and their possibilities, were faced head on. The events and developments I thought at the time would be absolute end-games (for others, for myself), my mother taught me were just bumps on the road. If you could do something about it, if you could dust yourself off and continue on, one way or another, nothing was so terrible in life that one couldn't cope.


Winning Trophies

I also like that Reich places "Success" in quotes-- I've never been comfortable with the language of 'success,' or in the end, 'success and failure.' Life is not a scale of wins and losses, that in the end will culminate in our value as human beings. Life is experiential. Life is engagement.  Life is relationships. Life is the meaning we create--and more interesting when we create it collaboratively, together.

Nobody 'wins' at life. There is not a gold medal awaiting you at your death bed.  What do you do with a gold medal anyway? Something else I've never understood, something else from which I've been unable to derive meaning. Trophies come in many forms. You win! You have a yacht! You win! You bought out all the products in Whole Foods and pushed everyone else out of the way in doing so! You win! Someone out in the world has placed a mark upon your forehead- you are worthy! You win! What have you won? Who are you now? Where do you locate meaning? Why do you do what you do? Why are we here?



Reich and Buddhist Thought Convergence?

Reich's Self-Knowledge scale of what he calls 'Personality Drugs' organize as follows:

A. I want it now.
B. I want to be loved.
C. I want to be in charge.
D. I want to be the smartest person in the room
E. I want to feel safe.

This looks to me a lot like a breakdown / overview of fear-led desires.

Our complex, unpredictable, beautifully tumultuous world today asks us to release and accept a great deal. Accept some level of loss and difficulty. Let go of fears, let go of fear-driven desires, let go of expectations that you can plug in and turn off. There will be no sleepwalking through this precious life. Engage. Collaborate. Create.  We make the road by walking.

"Nature Sees You" Koko the Gorilla sends a message to COP 21, a message to the World

Koko says "Nature Sees You"

Thoughts from COP 21: In Order to Pave the Path to Great Hope and Transformation, Must We First Engage in a Ritual of Mourning?

The words fell like a blow to my solar plexus.  Nothing revelatory for me in terms of what was happening, yet, there it was.  Tears began streaming down my face. I focused my breathing to ground myself, to prevent a wild sob from bursting forth. 

***

It was the Friday of the first week of the Climate talks, the Conference of Parties  (COP21) in Paris, 2015.  I was in the ‘blue zone,’ the section with badges for party members, observers, dignitaries.  Sitting next to me in Press Room 3 was my Filipina friend Sarah, a member of Global Ecovillage Network and affiliate of the Inter-Religious Climate and Ecology Network. We’d just observed an interfaith press conference panel of actors connected to these networks.

Global interfaith climate pilgrimages converge in Paris
for COP21, from the Philippines, Italy, Germany, across Africa, Korea,
Sri Lanka, Thailand...

 The interfaith panelists spoke of the role of faith leaders to engage on climate change issues. They shared how,  in part, faith leaders can show a path towards hope, to demonstrate the possibilities of another trajectory than the one we’re all on, in our global climate change work. They spoke of difficult realities too, of greed and fear as guiding forces in the talks. The panelists drew attention to the brutal suffering and systemic injustice visited upon the peoples of their countries, their Sangha, their congregations- due to the cyclical impacts and causes of climate change. Theirs was an injection of ethical awareness, a call for guiding compassion in policy decisions. They asked for recognition of our innate global interconnection as Beings of the Earth. It was a moving, clear and thought-provoking press conference. Their words embodied a projection of hope.

Just as Sarah and I were gathering ourselves to leave, a group from a global indigenous platform took their seats on the press panel. We sat down. The word ‘alarmed’ sounded repeatedly. Their tones were angry, frustrated, morose.  I learned that just in that day, the language regarding indigenous and nature rights—even language agreed to in previous COPs—had been bracketed-negating

Indigenous Peoples of the Planet speak @ COP21 press conference

commitments to these protections and responsibilities, if at least temporarily, out of operational texts.  The next potential step is deleting them altogether. 

And this is when, unexpectedly, I felt the blow to my center. For the rest of the day, uncontrollably, tears began welling up, spilling over.  I realized that all the good will and openness which ushered in the climate talks, the engagement of governmental and UNFCCC leaders in the interfaith and community programs, had allowed me a sliver of hope.  And yet, for this language to have been bracketed (and later deleted except in the non-operational preamble) indicated that the same myopic, narrow-minded and zero-sum competitive attitudes were at work behind the scenes, among some governmental negotiators. Bracketing of these texts felt like a slap in the face to the Living Earth, to this precious life. Our most cherished Beings of this planet, our inter-relationships and respect with others, our ancient wisdoms drawn from a collaborative responsive relationship to the world-- we as a global humanity cannot commit to protect and honor. 

                                                     Sarah and I started thinking about the only living tree on the COP 21 grounds.   Sarah suggested a ritual dance and song of indigenous and traditional spiritual practitioners, around the tree.  She suggested this as a message, as a way to bring people into a visceral understanding of the interconnection and sacred ecology messages of indigenous and spiritual groups—one that words alone could not seem to manifest. 

The only living tree inside the blue zone badge-required COP21 grounds (photo credit, Sarah Queblatin)

This was a hopeful idea, and intellectually, principally, and intuitively sound—as were the interfaith panel’s messages.  I found myself imagining instead, however, a great mass wailing. Gathering together around the tree and holding a wake. Gnashing teeth. Pulling hair. Weeping, grieving together as a planet for all we have lost, and all we are going to lose.  Beyond my socialized cognitive composure, my body was calling me to throw myself at the roots and trunk of this tree, to wail. To bellow out unto the earth and echoing skies. To bellow unto the midnight stars.

In Thailand, there is a Buddhist ceremony, 'non loeng sadorcro,' a death ritual in which monks conduct death rites for the living.   People wishing to release bad luck or make a change in their lives will lie down in coffins while death rites are performed. Many claim a sense of rebirth and new beginnings upon rising again and stepping out from the coffins. Around the world, cultures embrace similar metaphorical rituals or narratives that enable individuals and communities to release the old, so the new may enter.  Death rituals, mourning and wakes are a way of letting go, and opening up the universe for possibilities of new hope, of new beginnings.  Nature’s wisdom teaches us: for life to perpetuate, there must be death.

Perhaps before we can know true hope--in our bodies, in our actions, in a transformative and sustaining way—we must first properly, fully, and inclusively, engage in a ritual of grief for the losses to our planet.   We must go through it, this suffering and loss, in order to get out of it.  In order to enter into a new world. To create a new manner of Being. I believe in creating hope, in making the road by walking.  Before this can happen, at least for me personally, and perhaps  for us collectively,  we must first allow ourselves to grieve.

***

Two videos worthy of viewing:

Astronauts around the world speak to leaders at COP21

Indigenous  Peoples speak at #COP21

Building Communities of Climate Resilience and Sustainability Across Asia: The Inter-Religious Climate & Ecology Network & INEB

INEB & the ICE Network: Solidarity and Action for Climate Justice
By Emilie Parry

Splendid views of the Himalayas from Deer Park Institute

“Bandh! Bandh! Bandh!” Ajay, my taxi driver for the past 12 hours, shouts out to passing lorry drivers who will only have to turn around and follow our tracks, once they discover for themselves: the road ahead is ‘bandh!’ or closed, blocked by a massive pile of earth and boulders delivered by landslide just a few moments prior. It is 1 AM, raining.  No one will pass through until somehow bulldozers can access this stretch of hilly, twisting road, and begin the work of clearing it. This will not be happening tonight.

Here we are, two souls in a night taxi on its way to Deer Park Institute in Bir, Himachal Pradesh.  It is telling that the first Hindi word I learn, my first night in northern India, has to do with landslides and closed roads.  We are, after all, in the age of anthropogenic climate collapse, and I’m seeing yet another symptom, close up and personal.

Earlier in the night, Ajay explained to me that the reason he was speeding wildly over the mountainous hairpin turns, around foot and vehicle traffic, was to avoid the landslides he knows will come with this heavy rain at the foot of the Himalayas. I think of racing through rain on my bicycle.  In the end, instead of avoiding, do I manage to catch every raindrop as it falls? Will we be racing to meet every landslide as it crashes down the mountainside?

“Are you scared?” he asks.

“No, just alert. I’m alert.”

As we make our way onward upon one diverted road after another, hitting impasse after impasse due to a landslide or a washed out road, we pass great lorries perched upon the precipice. They line the edge of the narrow roadway, sharp downward drops just inches from their parked tires. Their drivers inside, also alert, appear deeply vulnerable to me.  What would it take to tip vehicles and human cargo tumbling down into the deep and twisting ravine below? Very little, I sense. Trapped on the mountainside with no other option, they must wait it out until morning.

Since sleep has no chance, my mind begins to wander. I find myself remembering the 2012 INEB Inter-Religious Dialogue on the Human Drivers of Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss at the Islander Center, Sri Lanka.  The conference was organized in a visual and interconnected manner. During the first day keynote and introductions, we were provided an overview of anthropogenic climate change and climate science as it directly relates to the Asian continent.  We were given a map from the high Himalayas, stretching across Asia down to the Asia Pacific islands, examining the 3 interlinked eco-systems and their experiences with biodiversity loss, environmental degradation and the impacts and vulnerabilities of climate change.  ‘Mountain Ecosystems,’ ‘Plains and Agriculture,’ and ‘Marine and Coastal Changes’ workshops traced the climatic changes, vulnerabilities, risk and impacts from mountain to sea of the Asian continent.

Rising global temperatures and ‘black carbon’ have caused accelerated ice and snow melt of Himalayan glaciers and mountain tops, resulting in landslides, flooding and disruptive and extreme climate patterns (including rain in places like Shimla, where rain used to be a rarity), and all the ensuing interconnected biodiversity loss, climate risks and disasters.  Flooding below increases in places like Bangladesh, as snow and glacial melt flows downstream.

As planetary eco-systems are increasingly imbalanced, extreme drought and extreme flooding in the plains and agricultural stretches across southern India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and other countries of this region manifest. From flooding we trace the continent to the oceans and island nations, where regional sea level has been rising at rates faster than predicted. Island nations of Tuvalu, Fiji, and Kiribati are becoming engulfed by the rising sea levels, entire nations turned climate refugees, while cyclones and floods rip through the Philippines and Indonesia, and the Mekong Delta countries struggle with protracted drought followed by intense rains and flooding.

At this point in time, in 2015, none of the above should be any news to the reader.   During the 2012 INEB conference, the focus quickly became about what actions and influence can this broad span of religious and community leaders take together, collaboratively.  It was decided that the Inter-Religious Climate and Ecology (ICE) Network would be formed, in order to leverage the experiential and skilled knowledge of its affiliates, to facilitate and support the climate change education of monastics/clergy and other spiritual leaders, to create platforms for Asian communities to have a voice in the regional and global climate discourse, and to support collaborative climate/environmental problem solving and applied learning exchanges across the network.

This past April, the ICE Network held its 2nd conference in Seoul, South Korea, with pre-conference programming of a JNEB Japanese visit of Fukushima, nuclear activists, and eco-temples and alternative energy cooperatives in Tokyo; an A-Z climate change workshop for faith leaders in Seoul; ‘exposure trips’ around South Korea to see the impacts of dams, environmental degradation, nuclear power and displacement around the country; and the efforts of communities to counter these threats and to create sustainable solutions.

***

“You are here for a reason. You are here for a reason. We are here for a reason!’  So rang out the words of Mr. Nadarev Yeb Saño, former official representative for the Filipino government to the United Nations Forum on Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) and the Conference of Parties (COP) Climate Talks, in his keynote speech at the ICE II “Climate Change, Sustainability and Resilience” interfaith conference in Seoul, South Korea.

The ICE Network, in coordination with the Asian Civil Society Conference on Climate Change and Ecology (ACCE) in Korea, facilitated a gathering of spiritual leaders, diverse faith practitioners, and community activists--from Buddhist to Muslim, Hindu to Christian, Animists and Shamans, and a broad inclusive swath of belief systems joined to engagement with many facets of Climate Justice.   In its own Small-is-Beautiful way, the ICE Network is seeking to respond, not just philosophically, but in applied conscious and intentional action, to these climate-change induced existential questions of our anthropogenic era.

Spring-boarding from this conference, several working groups have been formed to strengthen and facilitate concrete actions to reflect the awareness and education programs, and the heightened capacities of network affiliates created by joining together within a network.  One such working group is a Climate Change Yathra or COP 21 pilgrimage working group, which has been formed to support and facilitate network affiliates’ climate Yathras for education, awareness and messaging toward the Paris Climate Talks this winter at COP 21. It functions in cooperation with Yeb Saño’s People’s Pilgrimage to COP 21 Paris, the We Have Faith African Caravan Campaign to COP 21, and the broadly reaching ‘people’s platform’ for COP 21 messaging, Our Voices. This climate Yathra group may coordinate with the Education Working Group, which is exploring ways to regionally expand the A-Z Climate Change workshops for faith leaders.

Another working group is initiating support for building eco-temple and sustainable sacred spaces across network affiliates, including sustainable energy systems, water management systems, sustainable harvesting and building, chemical-free buildings, permaculture, biodiversity restoration and organic farming or food forests. The Eco-Temple Group may also collaborate with the Disasters & Climate Working Group, to incorporate eco-temple and sustainable or natural building with permaculture for climate adaptation and mitigation/disaster risk reduction rebuilding following a disaster.

Climate Change, or climate disruption, collapse, or crisis as it is more often referred to of late, immediately issues a ‘call to purpose’ within a call to action, and an existential examination of who we are as beings on this planet. What and who do we treasure or hold to be sacred? Where and how do we find or create meaning?  What is our role, as spiritual beings, as accountable humans whose species have instigated-- and are perpetually intensifying- our own planetary environmental collapse? How have we arrived at such an urgent point of ecological and existential crisis? Why are we here?

Like the great lorries on the mountain roads, we as a planet are perched upon a precipice, in danger of existential suicide.  According to former NASA climatologist James Hansen  (‘The Point of No Return,’ Rolling Stone, 5.Aug.2015), we may have already been tipped off this precipice, and are now tumbling down the slippery, rocky terrain of a forever-changed planetary ecosystem.  Hansen, with his team of climate scientists, suggest that mean sea levels could rise 10 feet by 2065, or 10 times more quickly than previously predicted. They warn that, if emissions aren’t cut,  “We conclude that multi-meter sea-level rise would become practically unavoidable. Social disruption and economic consequences of such large sea-level rise could be devastating. It is not difficult to imagine that conflicts arising from forced migrations and economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization." (Holthaus/2015)

For quite some time now, most vividly since the 1970’s, climate scientists, indigenous leaders, community activists and environmentalists have been warning us that we if do not change the way we live and relate to the other beings on this planet, we will reach a point of no return, where we cannot salvage and restore our sacred ecological balance. Resilience, as one defines it within ecology and social ecology, is the ability to restore the balance of an eco-system following a severe trauma or shock.   Once we pass the point of no return, it may be that resilience is no longer an option--only transformation.

The question then moves towards how we will engage in and guide this transformation. What will I do for my part to collaborate with this living planet to transform, heal, and find a new balancing point?  And you? Why are we here? What will we do?

Here we are, a multitude of souls perched on the precipice, on small surface patches of the great blue planet.  We’re in a bit of a difficult situation. We are about to fall—perhaps we already are falling -- and it is going to hurt each time we bounce and tumble.  Can we go through this compassionately, with love, with respect and protection for the wellbeing and care of all beings on the planet?

***

As Ajay and I bounce along the potholed, pitted mountain roads (smooth only 3 days before according to Ajay, now wearing the damage of falling rocks), I contemplate the value of an ‘interfaith Kalyanamitra,’ how important it is that humans actively join together in solidarity, compassion and care as we navigate a planet in crisis.  INEB and the ICE Network are planting these ‘seeds’ for another, more balanced way of living, of compassionate coexistence for all beings on this planet, within a context of rapid, unpredictable and disruptive climatic shifts. These efforts emerge in order to mitigate and adapt, yes, but also to forge relationships that can help carry us, with informed intention, through the many challenges on the road ahead.  You are invited to join in solidarity, to engage together in community creating a new path.

Playing in a loop in my mind until we reach safe haven-- the warm, solar-sourced lights of Zero-Waste, organic and off-the grid Deer Park where my INEB/ICE Network friend greets me-- is this song:

"If the sky that we look upon should tumble and fall, or the mountain should crumble to the sea-- I won't cry, I won't cry, no I won't shed a tear, just as long as you stand by me."  --Ben E. King

*This article first appeared in the INEB publication Seeds of Peace (vol. 31, No. 3, September-December 2558 -or- 2015, 'Sustainability & Resilience.')  This is a terrific issue, full of important stories and examples of building community support and engagement around climate resilience and sustainability.  I encourage support to the publishers, the International Network of Engaged Buddhists or INEB .