Don’t Choose: We Grow Together

Mina Raver asked me this morning, what values drive

me? What values our lives become? And I had to answer with

things that don't always go together: generosity and

kindness and fierceness and justice and pleasure. And she

wrote back and asked, do those things fit together? Do those

things fit together? How do they fit together? Do they ever bump

up against each other? How do you make a priority? How do you

prioritize them? And I asked back in my head, before I

answered, I asked, How can there be a priority? They're all

important, they don't take precedence one over the other.

We need to drop the fallacy that the priority is necessary, that

one has to take precedence, that we can't have it all, that we

can't have both. Can we have justice and generosity? Can we

have generosity and pleasure? Yes, yes, we can have them both

if we understand the ways that we are interconnected, the ways

that justice and pleasure and generosity and kindness and

justice all rely on each other. They become more themselves they

become more each other they become more when they are

together. More when they are together, not less. They become

more, we become more, there is no priority. There is only how

do these two things grow together? How do they dance

together? How do they fit together? When you plant a tree

next to another tree, they are impacted by the presence of one

another. But they can both still reach the sun, they can both

grow together, their trunks entwined even, and thrive. In

the forest, about which I am forever talking, there are trees

and trees and trees and trees, big tall trees and short trees

and shrubs and bushes and vines. And underneath the soil, all

those roots, interconnect, they are close, they are touching,

they are talking, they are sharing resources. They are

sharing lives. This is how we do the work. This is how things

happen, is by not making a priority. Or rather by making a

priority of specific things. By making a priority of things like

humanity, humanity is a priority. The interdependent web

of all existence is an even bigger priority. Taking care of

the life around us that's the priority. The priority gets

bigger and bigger, the bigger our vision gets. The bigger our

understanding gets, the bigger our perception our

proprioception our interoception gets, the bigger the body gets.

And when the body is at its very biggest It is everything. And

that is where we are located, is in everything. And so we cannot

just say oh, well we'll have breath but we won't have blood

circulation today. You can't do that. I mean, we do, when we're

under absolute survival stress we do, our bodies do. They say

you can have circulation but only in your trunk not in your

limbs. Or they say you could have had breath but that's not

working out right now we're going to stick with circulating

the blood as long as we can. Bodies say you can have

consciousness but not right now because we're under too much

stress. So we're going to just put you in shock until we can

figure out what to do next. So we do, we don't always do

everything all equally exactly at the same time. But when we're

planning, when we're living, when we've got a little room to

make some decisions- if we are in a place to even think about

priorities, and not just act, and not just grasp in

desperation. Those are the moments when there are no

priorities. Where priorities aren't a thing. When everything

is as important as everything else. When everything is as

important as everything else. And if these are already the

values that I have decided are the priority, they are already

the most important thing. And so we will have to find a way that

generosity and kindness and justice can coexist. We will

have to find a way that pleasure can exist with everything. We

will have to find a way to enact love. We will have to find a way

to enact love. And this is true even in our businesses, even in

our work, even with our teams, especially in our businesses,

our work our teams. This is the reason that I do this work.

Because it is when we lose track of this, it's when we lose, lose

our understanding of the interconnectedness of all of the

values that we carry all together, when we lose track of

all of that, that's when our institutions lose their

humanity. That's when our institutions lose their

interconnection. That's when our institutions facilitate and

support us becoming disconnected, instead of

facilitating and supporting us becoming connected. We need to

become connected, we need to stay connected, we need to be

engaged with each other, consciously engaged with each

other. We need to have systems that support that. So yeah, all

five of those things all together, all at once. Because

without all five of those things altogether, all at once, we

start to make something disposable. We fall out of

integrity, because we make something disposable. If it's

disposable, then it's not really meaningful anymore. And it

causes moral injury. And when it causes moral injury, it damages

us. And it damages our ability to move through the world and it

damages our ability to make things better. It damages our

ability to be interconnected. It damages our ability to lift one

another up. And those are inherent to our existence. So

no, I don't prioritize those things. I prioritize all of them

together. I don't pick and choose. They grow together.