The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of all kinds.
The Dalai Lama
(borrowed from Ella Dee’s blog)
The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of all kinds.
The Dalai Lama
(borrowed from Ella Dee’s blog)
I might have to use that quote at a conference I am going to and presenting at. It fits in nicely with this paragraph that I wrote.
“Adopting sustainable landscape governance needs inspiration and participation more than mere information. It has to address minds by providing a toolkit to help frame problems and possible solutions, but it also has to address hearts as well. There is a need for innovative approaches to draw artists and story-tellers, scientists and therapeutic professions, conservationists and policymakers, the public and experts into a conversation to help formulate images of a healthy, sustainable lifestyle, well connected to the landscape and the environment in which people live.”
In other words, it needs a lot of dreams to take us there
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Amen Joanna. Well said. One of the things I like best about the good food movement is that it is attracting participation from a broad range of people–whose interests extend beyond just making money on the one hand and just buying food on the other. For many (most, I believe) it is part of a vision of a better more sustainable world. And it is reconnecting people to the soil and to ecosystems. I hope your presentation goes well. You’re spreading a good, and important, message.
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Thank you for the encouragement
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Bill, So true. The human race has needs beyond the basic needs of food, water, shelter, and clothes. In my humble opinion, humans have a need for self worth. They need to feel like they have worth in a world swimming with what is called success. They need to be physically touched and given a feeling of being loved. Not in a romantic gooey way but in a way that speaks to emotional needs. The human race has needs that go far beyond basic survival. Yes, folks can and do basically survive but they rarely reach their true potential in that state. Believe me, I know.
Have a great basic needs and beyond day.
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Well said as usual. In our culture when we say someone is “successful” or that they have had a “successful” career, we almost always mean they’ve made a lot of money–meaning far more than they need. I like the quote because it invites us to reconsider “success” and to think about what kind of people the world most needs.
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On “solid month” in Kibwezi, Kenya, at a mission (work camp) I wrote day after day my personal “rant” about Need(s) – because the concept of “need” at the time rubbed me so much the wrong way. It (writing) is all in one notebook. I typed it into a large paper after we returned summer 2011.
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“What we need more than anything else today is not textbooks, but text people.” — Abraham Joshua Heschel, twentieth century rabbi, philosopher and activist. People are the texts that (the next generation) children read.
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Good one. Text people. I hadn’t heard that before.
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I understand. After spending time in Haiti it was impossible for us to think of “needs” the same way we once had.
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Nailed it.
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I thought so too.
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…EllaDee who loves to borrow words!
I love that quote because until I found it I never had an answer to the “what do you want to be when you grow up” question. Although I haven’t managed to quite feel grown up, I at least have the answer 🙂
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Great answer. Your quip reminds me of something Joe Walsh said at a dinner a friend of mine attended. Someone at the table asked him, “Where did you grow up?” He answered, “I didn’t.”
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One my favorite all-time quotes.
p.s. Yes, to heated chicken waterers after a chilly night!
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It resonated with me too.
Maybe a slight revision would be apropos: “The planet does not need more successful people. The planet needs more heated chicken waterers.”
🙂
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