Human being, not doing
Seven years ago I truly realised the meaning of “human being”...
Arriving into Tortola in the middle of the night, picked up by strangers on a boat and taken to Gorda, shown around a small water damaged apartment with broken locks, chip boarded windows, geckos, cockroaches and left to sleep at 2am.
I didn’t sleep, of course.
The cockerel joined my wakefulness at 5am.
I drove full throttle, reaching 15mph in the struggling Suzuki Jimny I’d borrowed, toward Leverick Bay where I boarded a boat of more strangers who stared intently at the new person on the islands, who knew nobody.
The water was bright blue and crystal clear, a hard contrast to the dry, brown and broken land that Hurricane Irma had torn through, leaving damaged or non-existent homes, offices, schools, shops, vehicles, roads and flora. It took no lives, miraculously.
I was offered a hand to jump the gap from boat to sand on Necker Island. Paradise, usually. Not then. I saw before me a building site and so donned a high vis and sturdy shoes. A hive of physical activity was afoot - clearing and re-building amidst the aftermath. My role was to help rebuild people. This mental health and wellbeing practitioner had spent the last 2 weeks (the notice period of the trip) researching the hurricane, natural disasters, trauma interventions. I’d carried a box file full of resources to help people’s psychological therapy.
That box file didn’t get opened after day 1.
It wasn’t needed.
What was needed was:
- a space for open and honest dialogue about daily life
- creation of positive narratives for hopeful futures
- understanding of differences between people, how they coped and felt
- listening, talking and more listening
- a place to ask questions, suggest changes, make plans
- authentic connections through vulnerable interactions
- and of course, lots of fun and games
Recognise any of these needs?
Aren’t they more about how we are rather than what we do?
Wouldn’t the world be better if leadership came from this?
We’re all different and we’re all the same. We have different starts and ends to life and everything in between is unique, but we all need love, care, compassion and peace.
The good news? We’ve got these at our disposal because we’re human. When dealing with humans, we need to remember how alike we are in our diversity.
It’s simple really, isn’t it...
Seven years ago changed me forever. The strangers became friends, clients taught me as much as I taught them, global work became a way of understanding difference, humanity became a focus, happiness became my business and I’ll never underestimate the power of the way we are rather than the things we do.
After all, we are human beings, not human doings.
Much love to everyone I crossed paths with on that journey. It was wonderful, terrifying, brilliant, tough, inspiring, heartbreaking and amazing.