Today I want to share a wonderful quote from Desmond Tutu. In many ways it is an extension of my post about helping others that was published on Monday. I discovered it this week and found it truly inspiring.
Ubuntu is a concept that we have in our Bantu languages at home. Ubuntu is the essence of being a person. It means that we are people through other people. We cannot be fully human alone. We are made for inter-dependence, we are made for family. When you have ubuntu, you embrace others. You are generous, compassionate. If the world had more ubuntu, we would not have war. We would not have this huge gap between the rich and the poor. You are rich so that you can make up what is lacking for others. You are powerful so that you can help the weak, just as a mother or father helps their children.
We cannot be fully human alone. What a profound truth. Life is not just about me. I cannot even be fully human as an individual. There is no such thing as individual success. No one ever achieves anything by themselves. The quicker that we accept – and appreciate – this, the sooner we can find wholeness.
We find our humanity inside our connections to others. We can only ever hope to unleash our full potential in relationship with others.
WHAT NEXT?
Who could we (re)connect with today? Maybe we’ve been thinking that we don’t need anyone else when the truth is we need to swallow our pride and ask for some help. Who could you ask for help today? And who could you offer help to today?
Do something!
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
This one made me gush with connectedness. We ARE all connected. How ever you want to call it…in one way or another we are all ONE people. I love that, Ubuntu. It sounds like a tribe.
my favorite ubuntu definition is – i am because you are. i’ve always advocated the need for connectedness, but since realistically we can never be connected to everyone in this life, can we ever be fully human?…. maybe that’s where eternity completes the equation.
@Deana | It DOES sound like a tribe…maybe we should officially launch the Ubuntu tribe?!
@Lon | “I am because you are” – I love that!
We may not be connected to everyone indirectly, by might it be true that we are indirectly?
Hey Sam
Your post has reminded me that I had meant to add the book, “The Ubuntu theology of Desmond Tutu” to my “must read” list.
Tutu is a monumental hero!
Pax
J
I think it’s a great tribe name! One I could happily be a part of!
I don’t feel like I am connected to everyone directly…more like you said, indirectly. We are all human, that makes us all connected. If we allow ourselves, we can see similarities in everyone. I think often, our lives are so crowded and our minds and hearts too noisy to stop and realize we are no different at the very basic parts of life. Am I any different than the mother living in a slum in India wishing for a home for her family, and for medicine for her child? Am I any different than the wife in Africa wishing her husband would return safely from his travels? We may have been born into different lands, and different circumstances, but in the end, we are all the same.
Something we all long for as Humans is Life. Real life, life to the full! Life in abundance. And that is the very reason some individuals have come into our path to touch our very hearts. In the hopes of offering a life worth living.
Yes we are all connected.We are here for each other. How do you take that knowledge of connectedness and move to the next step of contact?
What do we do when we face someone who actually has asked for help? How do we break out of the frigidness, when we feel paralyzed?
Don’t we often feel trapped inside of ourselves because, well….its more comfortable. Its so easy to maintain the status quo.
Breaking outside of ourselves, and reaching out to others is invigorating but often some of our biggest challenge. The author Donald Miller wrote:
” I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of EVIL, but rather have us waste time. That is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious.”
If we continue you in our comfortable pattern of life, (that we actually despise) we may go through life with out ever having to have contact with another soul. All because of fear, hurt, or brokenness.
“It is said that a newborn baby will die without human contact. So too will the spirit of an adult if not given the same opportunity.”
-Prisoner at Mansfield Correctional Institution
we all are connected.
we then must make contact.
Its one thing to see someone’s path. We then must move into their path.
“It’s the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.”
-from the movie”Crash”