Long time business blogger Yvonne DeVita at Lip-Sticking, a blog geared around social media, marketing, and women, asked me a few questions about my outlook for 2007 over at her blog.
Our exchange reminds me of that one word ubuntu sums up my outlook for 2007 and my desire for Web 2.0 and social media this year.
Oh, and ubuntu's not an ideology as per Wikipedia. It's not sustainable as a way of thinking, it's a way of being rooted in a felt sense of the indivisible wholeness of Life: that unshakable sense that the creative life-force that pulses through and animates me, dances through you, and is us. ("I am that which animates the body," Peace Pilgrim once said.)
"The apparent happiness of Africans, against all horror, seems to
derive from a sense of connectedness, or as the Zulu put it,
"ubunto." This word is often translated to mean community, but one of
them gave me what I
think is a more accurate definition: "I am
because we are; we are because I am."" - John Perry Barlow, The Pursuit of Emptiness
p.s. On the theme of ubuntu, one of my all time favorite books is set in the Africa of his childhood and written by African shaman Malidome Some, Of Water and the Spirit.
images Mardi Gras Zulu logo/poster; top view of an African basket made from telephone wire (visit more stunning kaleidoscope baskets and folk arts for sale at Indigo Arts)
Marvelous, Evelyn. Just outstanding. No one else makes me 'think' about life, and the act of living, the way you do. You have a way of nudging open that door of imagination, that world of shadows and colors and touch - where we seldom go. And, though it never disappears, in our neglect of that sensory place, we lose a small piece of ourselves. That very part that makes us part of the human experience -
Thank you for reminding me that I should slip through that doorway more often.
Posted by: Yvonne DiVita | Feb 20, 2007 at 02:46 PM