Thoughts on Copenhagen fallout

The international climate conference in Copenhagen, known as COP15, ended yesterday in yet another pathetic example of what we can expect from the so-called leaders of the biggest economic powers in this world. Specifically in the US, whether on healthcare reform, military policy, food safety, climate change, moral leadership is inexistant. The Founding Fathers would be ashamed.

Climate issues are truly global and every citizen of the earth has the same rights to clean air, water etc... For any nation to believe that it has some right to pollute or consume more than its fair share is egregious.

The scientific facts are undeniable. Even if you don't believe the catastrophic predictions of what will happen once climate change happens, the fact that it's happening are beyond debate for any objectively minded human being. Further, the fact that we are depleting natural resources much faster than they can be replenished or regenerated is also beyond question.

I read yesterday something to the effect of 'the science says we must, the technology says we can, now what we need is the political courage to do it'. The latter is shamefully absent where it counts the most. Leaders of small nations the world over are ready to do what's needed, even if they have fewer means to do it. Yet the so-called leaders of powerful nations are beholden to special interests who are hell bent on protecting their financial interests, and are dragging their feet or aggressively opposing real, needed change.

To those who are in a position to act but don't, I say ask yourself whether you can live with the idea that you are committing future crimes against humanity. Tens of millions of vulnerable citizens of the world will die because you are delaying the inevitable. Their blood will be on your hands and I hope one day you have to account for it, on this earth or elsewhere.

To those who are pulling the strings in the background, I say watch out. You're all about protecting your current profits? Ask yourselves: what is the future cost of your actions? What will happen if your customers, the citizens of the world, join in rejecting your shameful ways by boycotting your products or services? Don't underestimate the power of the Internet to allow people to organize effectively. Pay attention to the 350 movement if you need an example. If you can't support what is right for humanity on moral grounds, then look at your business risk, your brand risk, your market risk, and ask yourself whether in 5-10 years the choices you are making today will look like the right ones in retrospect.

Whenever I think hope is fading, I am reminded that most of the world's population stands together in wanting to do what's right, ready to make personal changes and sacrifices to play their part. These voices, once anonymous and disparate, are being brought together in unprecedented ways by the power of the Web to unite, organize, amplify, communicate, act. Iran's government learned this lesson in a very meaningful way a few months ago. Obama used this to his advantage to get elected. If he doesn't quickly live up to the promise of his presidency, he will soon find out there is a flip side to this coin.

As Maldives president Nasheed eloquently said, 'we will not die quietly'!

Why I write

"The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium." ~ Norbet Platt

I've never considered myself much of a writer. As most of us now do in our professional lives, I find myself writing all day in the form of emails, IMs, Powerpoint presentations and the like. This form of writing is merely a tool to communicate asynchronously with one or more counterparts, often in different locations. But since I do so much of that, writing in my spare time (whatever that is anymore), writing to express thoughts, as opposed to communicate information or guide co-workers, had never really occurred to me.

I remember what triggered my desire to start a blog. In 2007 I attended a marketing leadership offsite in Istanbul, where one of our senior marketers went on about the future of things like blogging and micro-blogging (this is where I first heard of Twitter). And it turns out he is an active blogger. Calls himself a 'serial opinionator', I could relate to that!

So here I was, thinking I should give this a go, to understand the mechanics of it more than anything. And what happened really surprised me: I found I really liked writing, and the more I wrote the more I found I had things to say.

Every once in a while I'm asked for whom I write. Good marketing question: who's your audience? I don't actually know how many read this blog, but it can't be that many. Dozens, maybe hundreds. But the answer is really simple: First and foremost, I write for me.

Platt's quote cited at the top of this blog resonates with me. Writing about a topic helps me slow down my own thoughts on the subject, helps me externalize my own opinions and ideas, in order to react to them in a different way.

There is also something incredibly liberating about unleashing one's thoughts onto a medium where they will be preserved. It frees the mind in a surprising way. I often find myself with many thoughts and emotions and ideas swirling inside my head. And just the act of capturing them on a piece of paper or electronically acts like a relief valve, giving me peace about not losing the thought while not having to keep it suspended in mid-brain by fear of it falling into the murky abyss of my subconscious. For those of you who have read or watched Harry Potter, how incredible is Dumbledore's Pensieve, allowing him to forever capture intact memories for future retrieval and actually relive them as an observer?

I guess this is not new. People have been keeping journals and diaries for centuries, probably for these very reasons. So why not just do that, instead of writing publicly? I've been thinking about that question lately, and I think the answer is that writing with the potential of being read by others forces more discipline, more rigor, and hopefully yields a better outcome. But I think it goes beyond that: Writing my own thoughts in a way to make sense to someone else challenges me to think through them in a deeper way. I'm not merely writing them down in a clerical way, I'm hoping to evoke an emotion, prove an argument, convey a message - both to myself and to whomever cares to read what I write.

Catharsis is a word I've often heard but never truly understood. So I looked it up. And I was surprised by how well the definition captured what I'm feeling here: '..Purification of the emotions, primarily through art, that brings about spiritual renewal or release from tension. Elimination of a complex by bringing it to consciousness and affording it expression.' Bullseye! In fact, three colleagues of mine in the past couple of years, when diagnosed with cancer (all in their 30's!), started blogging about their journey fighting this terrible disease. They described it as cathartic... (Two successfully recovered, one very sadly didn't make it).

So here we are. Now that I've surprised myself more than anyone at how much I enjoy writing, I think I'll keep at it. I actually love that I really don't care whether I'm any good at it, this is not a criteria for me. Sort of like the wise words 'dance like nobody's watching, laugh like nobody's listening', I write like nobody's reading :-)

Holiday Quick Wins

The list below is straight out of the December Net Impact newsletter, I found it very handy so thought I'd just copy it here.

• Give sustainable gifts. Treehugger's 2009 Gift Guide is a great place to start. Consider spending time with friends and family as well as exploring the options below:
  * Give a microloan from Kiva.org or MicroPlace
  * Donate three bed nets from Malaria No More for $30
  * Help an entrepreneur or family with Heifer International - a $20 donation can buy someone a flock of geese
  * Support social and economic justice and buy Fair Trade Goods from Global Exchange, World of Good, and Fair Trade Federation Members.
  * Donate to your favorite nonprofit. We can think of one in particular that would love your support.
• Reduce holiday waste. Purchase biodegradable flatware and utensils and LED Christmas bulbs that use 80-90% less energy than incandescents for office events. Check out this great column from Grist.org for more ideas.

• Give back to your community. From helping out at a local homeless shelter to hosting a gift exchange for families in need, volunteering can be a team building exercise that allows you and your colleagues to give back during the holiday season. For a short-term project consider the resources of organizations such as Points of Light and VolunteerMatch. If you're interested in something more long-term, consider working with your local Net Impact Chapter and joining or helping start a Service Corps or Board Fellows program in your local area.

Pluses and minuses

I spent a beautiful afternoon outside of Paris today with my 'second mom'. I call her that because she was so present and influential in my life. She was our Portuguese full-time nanny and housekeeper, stayed with us from the time I was 5 to when I was 16. She's like family to us and we've stayed in touch ever since. I'll call her MT here.

Like many Portuguese people back then, MT came to France to find work. That was 36 years ago. She turns 65 in a few days and will retire at the end of the year. She is then moving back to Portugal, where she now owns her own place paid for by living frugally and saving from each paycheck.

MT is an amazing and inspiring woman. She is a secular nun who has devoted her entire life to the service of others. Everyone who's ever met her has been touched by her kindness and compassion. I've known her literally my whole life, yet today I learned things I never knew.

I knew she had never known her father, and that her mother was unable to keep her and had sent her to live with her grand-parents in the Portuguese countryside. They were extremely poor people, who could not put food on the table every day. MT grew up with her grand-father's wooden clog as her only toy. Still, she would always speak of her youth with joy and gratitude.

Today, I learned a whole new side to this story. Apparently her mother sent MT to live with her grand-parents out of fear that her dad might take her (didn't get the whole story there). MT had 2 siblings who were older and apparently not in the same danger. Apparently she did not know the whole story, and grew up thinking her dad was dead and her mom had rejected her but kept her siblings. In school, MT was registered as a 'fatherless' child, a statute not envied in a deeply religious country. She apparently deeply suffered from these things.

As she's telling us this side of the story today we've never heard, she went on to say how for every fear and feeling of inferiority and shame she had growing up, she also had amazing people who went out their way to make her feel valued and special. Her grand-mother, the local priest and others.

The way she netted out this story is that for every minus or gap thrown at her in her life, other pluses and positives came in to restore balance and carry her forward, and this is the source of inspiration for her life of service and devotion to God and humanity.

There are many things to deplore in this world, from big things like atrocities of war and social injustices and the destruction of our planet in the name of greed, to smaller things like every day inconveniences, missed opportunities, financial worries, etc... I think the lesson I learned today was that whatever situations may hit us, it is within us to look for nuggets of hope for the future in each of these.

Thankful

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the US. Although we should feel gratitude and express thanks every day of the year, today we reflect more directly on that for which we are especially thankful.

As I pay attention to the world around me, I am thankful for the privileged life I lead and for my good fortunes. As I reflect on this past year and search within to find those things for which I am especially thankful beyond core pillars like health, family or financial stability, a few come to mind:

Thankful for unconditional love -- None of us is perfect, especially not me. I am thankful for the people in my life who accept and love me as I am. Am also thankful for all the selfless individuals who devote so much of themselves to improve the lives of others out of love and compassion. Peace and social justice have to start with love.

Thankful for inspiration and commitment -- I have always been somewhat of an idealist, but had gradually become somewhat of a cynic. As I look to the future, I have renewed inspiration to apply my abilities to contribute in more direct ways to improve the world around me, and renewed commitment to draw on this inspiration and follow through with action.

Thankful for comic relief -- Our lives can get heavy at times, and being able to find ways to laugh at ourselves and with each other certainly makes tough situations much easier to get through.

Thankful for music -- I've always found music to be a great way to accentuate or soothe my moods and emotions. Recently I've paid more attention not just to the music but to the lyrics of brilliant songwriters, true poets of their age, who are able through the sharing of their art to inspire the rest of us and help put words to feelings we would not always know how to express ourselves.

Thankful for the rain -- Our Irish friends may not appreciate this one as much :-) In Central Texas, where we've been in an extended drought, the rain we've experienced lately has been a blessing. There is something so cleansing, so unifying, about just standing or walking in the rain. Try it, you'll be surprised.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

"Give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way" — Native American Prayer

Dealing with loss

We all get to deal with loss at different points in our lives, and each instance probably affects us differently. Last week our 11 year old attended a funeral for one of her classmate's mom who wasn't even 40. One of my team members at work also just buried her mother this past week. Over this past year people close to us have lost parents, grand-parents, a child...

When a loss is so final, lots of questions must abound such as 'did I call them often enough?', 'did they know how much I cared about them?', 'what was the last thing I said to them?'...

Then there is the fear or anticipation of loss. We met a woman last night whose only son is about to be deployed to Afghanistan. She naturally fears for his safety, wondering if she'll get to see him again. Some of our friends work in law enforcement and place themselves in harm's way every day, making their spouses wonder if one day they'll get that dreaded call. As our parents and grand-parents age, we come to terms with the idea that they are not immortal and that one day they will be gone.

I guess the question I'm asking myself is whether the people I love have heard it enough from me. If they disappear abruptly from my life tomorrow, will I feel like they knew how much they meant to me? Will I wish I had done more, said more, shown more while I had the chance... I know I would.

Some people are gone and it's too late. For those who aren't, I'm committed to making sure they know how I feel about them, how thankful I am for them. That's my Thanksgiving pledge.

Footprints

Ran into this quote today. Made me reflect on the fact that this is how we grow as individuals, through the experiences we have with others. Most are fleeting and not meaningful. A few, like our parents, our siblings, our romantic partners and our closest friends, make impressions upon us that change us forever.

“Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile and leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same.” Anonymous

Beautifully said...