Monday 13 May 2019

Ubuntu

My Calm app recently dealt with 'ubuntu' in the 'daily calm' meditation. 

What is ubuntu?

According to Michael Onyebuchi Eze, the core of ubuntu can best be summarised as follows:

'A person is a person through other people' strikes an affirmation of one’s humanity through recognition of an ‘other’ in his or her uniqueness and difference. It is a demand for a creative inter-subjective formation in which the ‘other’ becomes a mirror (but only a mirror) for my subjectivity. This idealism suggests to us that humanity is not embedded in my person solely as an individual; my humanity is co-substantively bestowed upon the other and me. Humanity is a quality we owe to each other. We create each other and need to sustain this otherness creation. And if we belong to each other, we participate in our creations: we are because you are, and since you are, definitely I am. The ‘I am’ is not a rigid subject, but a dynamic self-constitution dependent on this otherness creation of relation and distance."

I found that explanation a bit complicated, so looked for another explanation. When former president of the United States, Barack Obama, made a speech  at the 2018 Nelson Mandela annual lecture — he said that Mandela “understood the ties that bind the human spirit.” 

“There is a word in South Africa — Ubuntu — that describes his greatest gift: his recognition that we are all bound together in ways that can be invisible to the eye; that there is a oneness to humanity; that we achieve ourselves by sharing ourselves with others, and caring for those around us,” Obama said. 

“Umntu Ngumntu Ngabantu” or “I am, because you are” is how we describe the meaning of Ubuntu. It speaks to the fact that we are all connected and that one can only grow and progress through the growth and progression of others.


Ubuntu has since been used as a reminder for society on how we should be treating others. 

For me it was best described by the Calm narrator, Tamara Levitt, who told the story of a group of African children who were invited to race towards a tree, with the winner being given sweets. What they did was join hands and run together as one, because to win was for them all to win.

This made me think back to a recent holiday to the Scottish Highland Railways, where in the coach trip to the railway station our guide (from Glasgow) explained the difference between Glasgow and Edinburgh people. He said if you turn up unexpectedly to a Glasgow home, they immediately invite you in and offer you drinks and food, however he said Edinburgh people will assume that the unexpected guest has already 'had their tea'. 

I realise when I work with teams, that a lot of what I do is to (unintentionally) draw on the ubuntu philosophy to get team members to respect and to care for one another. Working effectively together as a whole team, making use of the individual skills of team members in a complimentary way, can achieve amazing things!!!


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