Friday Notes, February 16, 2024
Dear Friends —
I learned a new phrase this week: “Umntu ngumtu ngabantu.” The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu explained its meaning this way:
In our African weltanschauung, our worldview, we have something called ubuntu. In Xhosa, we say, “Umntu ngumtu ngabantu.” This expression is very difficult to render in English, but we could translate it by saying, “A person is a person through other persons.” We need other human beings for us to learn how to be human, for none of us comes fully formed into the world. We would not know how to talk, to walk, to think, to eat as human beings unless we learned how to do these things from other human beings. For us, the solitary human being is a contradiction in terms.
Ubuntu is the essence of being human. It speaks of how my humanity is caught up and bound up inextricably with yours. It says, not as Descartes did, “I think, therefore I am” but rather, “I am because I belong.” I need other human beings in order to be human. The completely self-sufficient human being is subhuman. I can be me only if you are fully you. I am because we are, for we are made for togetherness, for family. We are made for complementarity. We are created for a delicate network of relationships, of interdependence with our fellow human beings, with the rest of creation.
I have gifts that you don’t have, and you have gifts that I don’t have. We are different in order to know our need of each other. To be human is to be dependent.
This is everything.
When you see the words “work” and “mental health” in the same sentence, I’m guessing it brings to mind a litany of ways in which people’s emotional, spiritual, and psychological well being can be undone by a toxic boss or an excessive workload. When you see the phrase “work-life balance” you probably think about the challenge of finding time and energy for family and fun amidst the demands of earning a living.
This week, I’ve found myself thinking about things in the opposite way. That is, how much I depend on my job to maintain a healthy mental state, and how grateful I am to be able to balance the weight of “life” with the weight of work.
When things feel a little destabilized on the home front, it’s almost like a vacation to be immersed in a daily flood of emails and Teams messages, and to bustle off to meetings with a notepad in hand. Are these deeply meaningful ways to spend time? Not so much. But do they create a sense of urgency, purpose, and engagement with others that distracts and fends off existential doubts? Yes, thank goodness, they do.
My current work in a grantmaking foundation that focuses on big problems of our day also helps me feel like I’m doing something, and not just a passive observer of a world that seems to be on the skids. That makes a huge contribution to my mental health — one I’d seek out in volunteer work if no one wanted to pay me to be part of a mission-driven organization.
In short: I’m appreciating my work in extra special ways these days . . . and also looking forward to a three-day weekend.
I don’t have anything funny to share today (sorry!) but I do have two thank yous. Many of you reached out after last week’s note with words of comfort — so much appreciated. And I also heard from some of you that that the note opened up some conversations between fathers and daughters that might not otherwise have happened, or least not happened right then. I cannot fully express how much it means to me to have been even a small part of strengthening that special bond. Umntu ngumtu ngabantu.
Have a good weekend,
-Ruth