Lynne Twist: Living a Committed Life
Lynne Twist is a world-renowned visionary committed to alleviating poverty, ending world hunger, and supporting social justice and sustainability. Her 40-year career has taken her from working with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, to the refugee camps in Ethiopia and the threatened rainforests of the Amazon, to guiding the philanthropic efforts of some of the world’s wealthiest families. Her breadth of experience led her to found the Soul of Money Institute, where she has worked with hundreds of thousands of people all over the world on topics such as fundraising with integrity, practicing conscious philanthropy, and creating a healthy relationship with money. Lynne first translated her compelling stories and life experiences into the bestselling book, The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life and joins us today to discuss her newest book, Living a Committed Life: Finding Freedom and Fulfillment in a Purpose Larger Than Yourself.
In the book, and our conversation, Lynne reveals the guiding principles that have enabled her to live as a thought leader and activist, teaching us that a committed life is one worth living: That sometimes the commitment to it alone is enough to ensure it happens. The universe is telling us repeatedly that we are in this together, she says, and in a world that sometimes feels chaotic and devoid of meaning, it’s incumbent that we draw together around what it means to be human. Okay, let’s get to our conversation.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
Taking a stand vs. taking a position…15:00
Pain pushes until vision pulls…27:00
We won’t think our way out of this…35:00
Replacing charity with solidarity…40:00
MORE FROM LYNNE TWIST:
Living a Committed Life: Finding Freedom and Fulfillment in a Purpose Larger Than Yourself
The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life
Check out Lynne’s Soul of Money Institute and The Pachamama Alliance
Follow Lynne on Instagram and Twitter
TRANSCRIPT:
(Edited slightly for clarity.)
ELISE LOEHNEN:
So nice to be with you again, Lynn. I now have three copies of your new book. It's a sign from the universe. And, as you know, I'm such a fan of the Soul of Money. In fact, I wrote about you and I wrote about that book specifically. I have a book coming out next spring about women and the Seven Deadly Sins and what we police in ourselves and in each other. So your book was foundational when I was working through greed and women and money. So thank you. So I highlighted your book intensively, this last book, which there's so many really beautiful moments and we'll go through the parts at least that really hit me in the heart. I know that you've spent your life in a committed way, but can you talk about that as sort of the organizing thesis of this book of, Living a Committed Life?
LYNNE TWIST:
Well, let's see. I discovered really that I was living a committed life while I was doing it. In the book I talk about how to create conditions where you can find your committed life, but those conditions were created for me. And I just need to admit that I was fortunate enough to meet Buckminster Fuller and Werner Erhard, right in the same period of my life as a young woman, and was super, super transformed by those two human beings and their way of living and being, and their way of seeing the world. And when I was able to help them meet each other, then the miracle that was born out of that was The Hunger Project. And I became like a midwife to something that wanted to happen that would've happened maybe anyway. But I was lucky enough to be there in the right place at the right time. And then it swept me off my feet and I became completely let's say almost in love with the idea that a human being like me, that anybody could make that kind of a difference with their life. And it became the center of my parenting, the center of my marriage, the center of my worldview, the center of my way of walking in the world. And and I've had such an awesome life as a result, a nice life I couldn't have planned. I couldn't have, you know, if someone had said, you know, you can have any life you want, I wouldn't have thought this one up because I would've thought it was impossible, you know? So I realized somewhere along the way that, and I started talking about this, this, I used this phrase, committed life where my commitments, my vision for the world, and my commitment to that vision is so much bigger than I could ever accomplish by myself, or that I can probably ever see in my own lifetime.
So it's so humbling. You realize the only way to be effective is to become the instrument of something and to collaborate with everybody everywhere. And that gives you relationships that are so awesome that you kind of have to pinch yourself. Like, you know, I always like to say to people that I worked with Mother Teresa, because people kind of can't even believe that. And I can't either. So I have to kinda say it to believe it myself. And, you know, someone like Desmond Tutu was in my life, you know, and I think Holy Moly, et cetera. And then people like you, people like the people listening to this who would be drawn to something like living a committed life that is a life not starring yourself, although you're kind of critical to it, but a life that's way biggers than than your life starring you and, and your life starring you can be such a burden. You know, trying to measure up and fit in and look good and be thin or be young or be smart or be everywhere you want to be and everywhere you think you should be and be everything to everybody you think you should be. It's just exhausting and not very satisfying.
But a life devoted to something larger than yourself is a life worth living. It's a life that is in recognition of life is given to us, it's given to us so that we can give it, we're blessed so that we can bless. We're born, I think, I can't prove this, but I've experienced it, to make the contribution that's uniquely ours to make. And when you find that dharma, that discovery that who you are is a match for what's wanted in the world. Oh my God. It's so thrilling that I wanted to do everything I could to make that available to people, because it's not only wonderful for you, the world needs us now. The world always did. But now the crises are so deep, so profound, so intense, so everywhere, so in every part of society, in every economic class, in every country, in every language, in every culture, that it's all hands on deck. And what a thrilling time to be alive when it's an all hands on deck moment. And it is. So that's why.
ELISE:
No, certainly. I mean we're going to dig into all of that, but what I love sort of at the beginning of the book, you set up this foundational idea that you write, “People often think that great leaders are born not made, that they are somehow destined for greatness. I believe, however, it's the opposite, that committing oneself to an inspiring cause is what forges you into a great human being.” And that you write about how you don't have to be smart enough or extremely talented or knowledgeable enough to commit. And that once you make that commitment, then the resources and what you need invariably come your way. Sort of putting yourself in that flow of the river guides you to where you need to go. And that's such a beautiful idea, because I think so many people struggle from imposter syndrome or an excess of humility, right? Of like, how could I possibly do anything meaningful, particularly in the context of sort of the great social change that's required. But like you, I think everyone, it's an all hands on deck. And that it's much more, having a feeling like I'm trying to make this transition at this stage of my life. It feels so, so incredibly meaningful and rich. And I would say for anyone who's listening, who hasn't read the Soul of Money, which is really about this idea of enoughness and a different concept of abundance, and there are some amazing Mother Teresa stories in their for everyone who's listening, who's sort of transfixed or caught in that idea of scarcity or feeling like they couldn't possibly move into something a little bit more service oriented. You can, I promise.
LYNNE:
Yeah. Oh, girl. Yes.
ELISE:
And you know, you talk, I know you're a spiritual person. I am as well, but you also talk about it as sort of that not being a requirement for doing this work. Can you talk a little bit more about that for people who, I think most of the people who listen to this are quite spiritual, but for people who aren't? And but I feel like anyone can understand a resonance or a synchronicity or that goodness, right? That maybe lights up your heart.
LYNNE:
Yeah. Well, one way of looking at it without labeling, only labeling it God or spirit, or, you know, something that an atheist or someone who's agnostic might not relate to. It's really, it's the power of love. And love and vitality. Aliveness is what makes life worth living. And when you love what you're doing, when you love that, you have the privilege and opportunity of doing it, or being it, or engaging in it, it's extraordinary. And you end up loving the people you're doing it with, and they end up loving you and that's what we all want. You know, no matter what our belief systems are, no one can deny that giving and receiving love is what we're made of. You know, why we were born in many ways. And I wanted to make a little adjustment or a comment, when you said something about humility. I want to make a distinction. I think I make this in the book. I can't remember what's in there and what's not. But, I've learned in my life that humility is different than modesty.
ELISE:
Yeah.
LYNNE:
And mostly we're engaged in modesty, which is false. And I would say modesty is the flip side of arrogance. You know, modesty is being afraid to be arrogant.
ELISE:
Yeah.
LYNNE:
It's just another form of arrogance when we're, Oh, it wasn't my doing. Oh, I didn't do it. Oh, I could never do that. Oh, that's way over my head. Those kinds of statements, which we all make, and we kind of get hooked by, are inone way, a kind of arrogance. And I'll explain this to you with a story. I have a, a wonderful, wonderful colleague named David Tucker. He passed away, unfortunately, but this is a beautiful story, and I can't remember if this is in the book, but he was having trouble with his marriage. He had a wonderful, beautiful wife and two little girls, and they were having struggles, you know, like people do. And he was feeling terrible about himself, and he was feeling, I'm not a good dad. I'm not a good provider. I'm not living up to the kind of husband I need to be. You know, I'm a total jerk. Life sucks. I'm terrible. I'm a bad guy. That was where he went into a ceremony with some shamans, a shaman in the Amazonian rainforest where I work. And then he shared this with me, this was a very powerful story for me. And so he wanted the shaman and the ceremony to fix him, is kind of what his entry request was. And when he was in the ceremony, he heard this booming, clear message you could say, or voice from wherever. So this takes a little bit of a stretch of one's belief system, but saying, “How dare you,” this voice said, “How dare you question my creation. How dare you doubt the creator?” And, it was like, how dare you insult my creation?
Now, whether you believe in God or a greater being or whatever, this story is instructive. Because what happened for David was he realized, no, my life has been given to me. It's a gift. What am I doing? Questioning that, messing with it, making it wrong, putting myself down, making myself completely unable to function? What am I doing with this gift that I've been given? How dare I take the precious gift of life and demean it and diminish it and hold it back? And it was like being hit over the head by a 2X4. You know, it's like, Oh my God, I need to stop doubting and questioning, and I need to get with the program and just give my best, give my all, give myself over. And, I say that that's an example of the voice was calling his doubt. And his, Oh, I couldn't do it. I'm too small. I'm too little. I'm not able, I'm not smart enough, and I'm not handsome enough, I'm not young enough, et cetera, insulting that arrogance. In other words, the voice was telling him he was being arrogant rather than modest, or modesty a form of arrogance. Once I think you discover that you're the instrument on the planet now of moving the dial, of moving the action forward, of the transformation we're all seeking, whether we know it or not, then you're humbled by that. And humility is healthy, humility is honest, humility is real. It doesn't insult or deny anything. You are in touch with the privilege of being alive. So I just say that about this thing, humility, because I think it gets confused with modesty. Modesty is a false degradation of ones self humility is discovering who you really are, and it's humbling to discover it.
ELISE:
I think the etymology of humility is humus or soil, earth, so it denotes being grounded, really standing in who you are. It's a beautiful word. I agree with you.
LYNNE:
Oh, thank you. I didn’t know that, that's information for me.
ELISE:
Good. Yeah. Alright. So this I thought was an incredible moment in the book, you talk about the difference between taking a stand and taking a position and how different they are. And obviously we conflate these two ideas and take a position all the time and work ourselves really into corners. Can you talk a little bit about why that's such an important distinction?
LYNNE:
Yes. Well, I make a distinction between taking a position and taking a stand in this way: when you take a position, the nature of positionality is it creates, it's opositionality. So if I say yes, it creates no, if I say left, it creates, right. If I say up, it generates down. If I say here, it generates there. If I say we, it generates, they. So positionality always creates its operationality and positionality, another way of talking about what a position is, it's a point of view. And if you think about the phrase point of view and kind of unpack it, it's a point from which you view. So for example, you know, in a theater, someone sitting in the front row in the center will have a particular point of view, the stage, and the actors and the actresses. But someone sitting in the far left side, in the last row on the right hand side, will have a very, very different point of view of the stage and the actors and the actresses, both points of view are totally 100% accurate for the people who are holding them. They're a 100% accurate. You really can't argue with the point of view for it is from one that person is seeing the world, and it's true for them.
We form our positions from our point of view, which might be the way we were raised, or whether or not we're an American or a Russian, or you know, a woman or a man or gay or straight. So our point of view is or our position determined by from what we see, from where we see, and positionality gets us in a lot of trouble because it's very important. You need to know where you are in the room to get to the door. So that's, you know, a point of view. And also that's what's your position on the game board? So it's very important, and there's nothing wrong with it, but we get confused and we think our point of view or our position is right and everything else is wrong, when in fact, every point of view is useful. And how I know that is because when you relinquish your point of view and let it go even slightly, you can have the space, the power of taking a stand. And when you take a stand, it's almost like going up above the auditorium where the people are sitting and seeing all points of view are useful. You know, the director of the production needs to have a vision of where all the points of view in the theater are going to experience the production. But a point of view really is very, very important.
When you relinquish it and you're committed to something larger than your point of view, what you get back is vision. And that's what you get from taking a stand. Archimedes said, “Give me a place to stand and I'll move the world.” And that's what Gandhi did. He took a stand and then from there, yes, he would drop down, if I can put it that way, and take positions. No, I think the British should get out of India. I think this law is unjust. I think this, I think that, but he didn't become his point of view. Who he was, was a stand that all people have a chance for a healthy and productive life. Who Martin Luther King was, was a stand. And when you hear his voice on his birthday, January 15th, they play on NPR, all his speeches. And I just love that. Cause you just hear the timber's voice. You hear, this is a man who's taken a stand, and it doesn't mean he didn't have positions here and there about this bill and that thing. This is wrong. This is right. But who he was, where he worked from, where he lived from, was a stand that all people be freed, be liberated, have a voice, have a chance for a healthy and productive life.
Just like Gandhi, most stands or all stands, I think really authentic stands are completely inclusive. All stands are something you can't check off. It's not like a to-do, you can't check it off in your lifetime and say, I did that. You don't take credit for your stand. You live it. And it's a really powerful way to look at life. And I've taken a stand now, I realize to live a committed life. I have within that a stand to bring forth an environmentally sustainable, spiritual fulfilling, socially just human presence on this planet, which is also the mission of the Pachamama Alliance. That's not something I can check off and say “done,” but I can participate. I can live my life from that stand. And then the positions or points of view that I take, it's almost like dropping down into the action and taking positions. But from a stand, you're empowered to see you have true vision, and you see all points of you. And they're all useful. They're all useful. One's not right and one's not wrong. They're all useful. You see everything. So that's a brief description.
ELISE:
And it goes to that Buckminster Fuller quote, that famous quote that you include, “You never change things by fighting the existing re reality to change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” And then you write also about “Within taking a stand, taking a stand for something not against something.” Going back to that positionality idea of this is right and that's wrong, but creating the world, I mean, it sounds like such a cliche, but taking a stand for the world that we all want to see, that we recognize would be inclusive, mutually beneficial, sustainable, that long list that you just rattled off, kind, hopefully more just, loving. And we're seeing this, right? Like we're seeing government grind to a halt in this country at least. We're seeing a lot of things we're living in very interesting times. But we're waiting, I think for a moment of, actually, can we build all of these, as you said, “There are people's points of view, which inherently makes them valid. To deny the validity of someone's point of view is to deny their humanity.” But how do we understand those points of view and build them towards something bigger?
LYNNE:
Well, I don't know the answer to that. There's no formula for it. But, but if we look at history, we'll see that the people who really change the game or transform the situation or move the dial, I like to say are people who, didn't do it through positionality, actually. So you think about, I mean, Gandhi's is such a great example, because “My life is my message,” he said, and he really lived his stand. Martin Luther King is another beautiful example, I would call Maya Angelou another example, I would call Nelson Mandela another example. The people who really changed things really dramatically, did it from a place that you and I would call a spiritual route, not from a position. Now obviously Nelson Mandela was against apartheid. Of course he was. But what he really lived from is liberating all human souls, including, you know, I tell the story about Nelson Mandela in, in the book, including his jailers, including the apartheid government. And he wanted to deliberate them too. He knew it was as painful for them to be crushing black people and crushing their rights every day. It was dehumanizing them as much as it was dehumanizing the people who they were targeted. And that is a stand, that's not these are the bad guys and these are the good guys. It's not that way. So even now, you know, I struggle with what's happening in the United States. I was just in England, and obviously right now while you and I are talking, they're just in a mess. The Prime Minister just resigned. The Queen died. They can't figure out who's in charge over there. And they've left the European Union and you know, it's a mess and everybody's fighting over everything.
And the same thing with our country. But people are stuck in their positionality and their points of view. And this person's wrong. This person's wrong. I struggle with it too. When I think about this whole election was stolen, you know, falsehood, et cetera. But where can I stand for this nation in a way that I can hear all voices, hear the frustration and hurt and upset and passion that's behind these points of view that have gotten so rigid that they're now like almost crazy. And where can we stand, that will allow people to be heard so they can be fully expressed? Because when you're fully heard and fully expressed, you can release your point of view, at least to some extent. When you're not heard, when you're argued with you, you get more entrenched. You know, if you look at pro-life and pro-choice, the stronger pro-life gets, the stronger pro-choice gets, I mean, we've just seen this with the reversal of Roe v Wade.
So now everybody's like more positional than ever. So it's not like one side's really going to win. It's more like, where do we stand, where we can hear each other's passion, hear each other's reverence for life itself? Where can we find the deep humanity and love and still have our points of view? Not that anybody's wrong and anybody's right, but just be in the inquiry together in a way that we live consistent with our deepest humanity. I don't have a formula for that, but I know that that's what's wanted now. I know that it's like we're in a collective species transformation. There's a phrase I use in the book that I got from Michael Beckwith and Reverend Deborah Johnson: “Pain pushes until vision pulls,” and the pain that's pushing now is so intense and pain is going to push us until vision pulls us.
And the pain of the positionality and getting more and more rigid and more and more certain that we're right and all the algorithms that keep feeding us more information that makes us feel righter and righter and righter, and everybody else, wronger and wronger and wronger, is just completely unhealthy. We need to lift ourselves up out of that and listen to each other. And it's hard to do. It's really hard to do because we're so entrenched now. But it's possible. It's possible. If you look at the end of apartheid, I mean, just think about how deep those beliefs were that people, white people, Afrikaners were so certain that people of another color were subhuman. And that they had to let go of that position. And they were raised generation after generation after generation to believe that the people who had black skin believed it themselves, that they were subhuman. They got into that mindset themselves. When you think about the Indians in Gandhi and that the British walked out of India. It wasn't a civil war. No. They walked out of India. It's incredible. We have so far to go. I'm not saying it's over. And South Africa is still struggling and prejudice the abounds and look at our country, my God. But at the same time, something's afoot and really afoot. The climate crisis, as I say in the book, and as I know you know, I believe is powerful, powerful feedback from our mother, telling her children, come on you guys, I'm giving you big feedback about the way you're living, the way you're thinking, the way you're relating to me, the way you're relating to the community of life, the way you're relating to each other.
The pandemic is feedback, big feedback. Perhaps it is not happening to us. Perhaps it's really happening for us, to awaken us, so that we can recreate what it means to be human. I think this is epic, epic, epic, epic history beat in the making now, you know, there's this wonderful phrase from, I think it came from Warner Earhard, that I heard it through, who founded Aston Landmark, he said, “When the first fish crawled up on land, suddenly elephants and eagles were possible.” And I think we're in that kind of a transformation and evolutionary leap where, like that moment when a fish crawled up on land and suddenly elephants and eagles were possible. I love that phrase. We're in that kind of a moment. The breakdowns are everywhere. Everything's not working, which is really kind of awesome because we realize the whole thing is off, the whole thing. It's not just adjustment over here, adjustment over there. The whole thing is off, the economic system's off, education system's off, healthcare's off, the way we relate to the natural world, the way we relate to animals, the way we relate to food. It's all not wrong. It's just off. And we can adjust that. Yeah, we can, We must. And I know we will.
ELISE:
Yeah. Well that, I love that quote about how pain pushes until vision pull. I mean, it, it feels like we're in a birth canal. And you talk about too, the difference between change and transformation and how, you know, change is almost this micro shift or, or a disavowal of what's come before us. Right, a “oh, we're just going to go in a different direction and abandon that” rather than using everything that we've learned, everything we know to transform, to create and birth something new. A different system. One that's not just moderately tweaked or slightly more evolved, but something wholly, wholly new.
LYNNE:
Mm-hmm.
ELISE:
Yeah. Without accusing, without destroying what's gotten us to where we are. It's a much more loving, in a way, a much more loving word.
LYNNE:
Well, and it's all standing on the shoulders of what has come before. You know, it's kind of like an honoring of the past rather than a denigrating of it. It's brought us to the point where we actually now can take an evolutionary leap. We have so many tools, such technology, we're so connected by the internet and the miracle of technology. We understand the trees now are communicating to us. We understand the networks, the microrisal fungal network underneath the ground that's now reverberating and communicating with the forest of the world, for example. We understand things we didn't understand. And the more we understand, the more we have the permission to take an evolutionary leap. You know, it's an honoring of the past that we can take this kind of a leap now that we're conscious enough, you know, people like you who are running programs that awaken and enlighten and that are insightful and that talk about the being-ness.
There's, you know, thousands of podcasts that are doing the work now and we're all on Zoom, you know, learning how to live in absolute communion with each other. We had a pandemic, we still have it. That connected us that made it really clear. No one can hide. You can lock your doors and put masks on and put air filters everywhere, and you can still get sick. So the, the universe is telling us over and over and over again that we're in this together, that we're off course. We're not flawed fundamentally, but we're mistaken and we can correct. And so that's just a treasure of a gift. And you know, we're so fortunate to be alive now with all that has come before, you know, some of it's dark and terrible and we want to know more of it, but it's taught us.
You know, the George Floyd murder. It was a murder, it was a horrible, viscerally, just almost unconfrontable murder. And we saw it, you know, way more times than we wanted to. And it wasn't the Game of Thrones. It wasn't actors, it wasn't special effects. It was actually someone murdering somebody in the name of the law. And that was not the only one. Obviously, you know, there's like hundreds, thousands of them. But that one somehow is pivotal to have us take another really powerful step forward with diversity, equity, and inclusion. And it didn't transform the whole thing. No, we're still colonial in our thinking. We're still, you know, being very, very unkind to each other. There's still rampant racism in all of us, but something is happening. Something is a foot. It's so clearly showing us a new way. And I feel, you know, as when I read the paper, I think, Oh my God, or listen to the news. Oh my God.
However, here we are and we're in it together. And there's no escape. There's no escape valve. No matter how much money people have, no matter how high, high the fences are around their island or their mansion, they can't escape it when we run out of water. So it's a beautiful, beautiful, humbling time to be alive. Challenging, Yes. Difficult. Yes. But that's when courage is needed. And courage comes from the heart. We're not going to think our way out of this. We're gonna feel our way through it. And when we start feeling each other and feeling our way through it, something new will be born in our capacity to be human.
ELISE:
Yeah. You wrote about your dear friend Linda Curtis, and this idea of honorable closure. Do you mind if I read these four steps? Because I thought they were so beautiful as a map for letting something be so that you can move forward into something new.
LYNNE:
Yeah, please.
ELISE:
Okay. So “The first step is to tell the old story in a new way. And the predominant quality of that step is gratitude. Linda's second step is to resolve any regrets that you may have with willingness and humility. The third step is to let go of the past and let it be. And the primary quality required is forgiveness of yourself and others. And then Linda's fourth step is to invent the next story. And that often is about reclaiming joy. When something ends, there's always something that's beginning.” I love that, stunning. And both also in its acknowledgement of what happened and that idea of letting it be, just let it be. So many of us, I think ruminate or rehash moments when we wish we could have been better, kinder, more evolved, but to let it be is, I think so critical to being able to allow yourself to be something new, right?
LYNNE:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's a beautiful four step process. And, you know, what she's really written is what we kind of naturally do when we're in touch with ourselves. We rethink, Oh my God, my divorce was so painful and I was so nasty to my ex. Or, you know, I've heard people say this, I'm not divorced, but I know a lot of women go through that. And I turned into some sort of a monstrous bitch, who was that person. And, I don't know what happened to me, but I know I'll never be that way again. And then I regret this. And I've got to let go of thinking that he's anything other than the father of my kids and someone you know, chose to live life with for a certain number of years. And now I'm so independent and I'm so grateful that I'm free of a relationship that constricted me. And he is too. And we can be friends. And, you know, you hear people do that and you think, Wow, how courageous? It takes courage. It takes heart, it's the highest form of love really. Mother Teresa said, “Forgiveness is the highest form of love and the most difficult.” And it's just so powerful to close a chapter in a way that honors the past, forgives. And that completion really always will generate an experience of love, an experience of love and a new future. They get born at the same time. So yeah. That's a beautiful thing, Linda’s and expert in that.
ELISE:
And you know, what I love about the book and about your life is this difference between service versus servitude. And I think so many women in particular have received a message of selflessness, selfless devotion, unmet needs, or not acknowledging our own needs so that we can serve other people's needs. And that is not what this is about, either. I think at the end you write about a friend, I can't remember who had this quote, learn to drink as you pour so the spiritual heart cannot run dry, and you always have love to give. And you talk again about another form of arrogance, which is to separate yourself from your work and to presume that you also shouldn't be included in the service. Can you talk a little bit about that sort of how to bring, rather than negating our own needs and our own existence and this idea of service, but how to make it encompass all of it?
LYNNE:
I discovered that by not doing that <laugh>, you know, I discovered that one. I mean, there's a model. I think it's a 20th century model. And, you know, maybe we just needed to go through that particular period of what's called charity. And, you know, Mother Teresa was an emblem, iconic version of that. Charity, when you say the word, you kind of think it's got sacrifice in it. You know, you got to sacrifice yourself somehow to be charitable. You have to give up something and actually, I like to replace the word charity with solidarity. And solidarity is a partnership between people who have different aspects or different, let's say assets that when they come together, it makes a third thing that's really extraordinary. So, I remember a story I don't tell in that book, but I think I told in the last one. Anyway, I'm telling you now that I was in Ethiopia after the 1984, 1985 famine. And I was with women who'd lost all of their children to starvation. And one woman had lost 11 kids, they'd starved to death. One of them was a baby nursing in her breast. Another woman had lost seven children. And somehow these women, they were so thin and so weak, but they were still alive. They did everything to save their children. Somehow, there were five of them who were now childless mothers. And we did a whole grief process around a dry well where they told the story, the excruciating death of each one of their children. And then we would wale after each child's story, the story of each child's death. I mean, it was emotionally the most exhausting thing. It was five days and nights.
And then I went from Ethiopia to New York to meet with an investment club of women who were wives of mega rich guys on Wall Street. And it was an investment club. And there were there were actually seven women in Ethiopia that I just left. And then I went to see seven women in a Park Avenue glorious apartment. And these women were gorgeous and they'd have every possible thing done to them, massages and, you know, hair and all that stuff. They probably had have different kinds of plastic surgery. They had more money than God. And they were, I would call just really hurting, hurting in those ways inside that, that no matter how beautiful you are on the outside, you know, if the inner life is vapid, it hurts. And this was an investment club and they wanted the money talk, but I couldn't even do it because I was so raw from the experience of being with the women in in Ethiopia, who'd lost their, all their children to starvation during that famine.
And so I told the story of the women in Ethiopia because at the end of the grieving process, the women in Ethiopia, one by one, all 7, them stood intheir beautiful Ethiopian garb, and they were real thin, you know, food aid had come and the famine was over and they stood and they made a commitment that they would live the rest of their lives to make sure no mother in Ethiopia do everything they could to make sure no mother in Ethiopia went through what they went through again. And they would get educated, learn to read and write, which they didn't know how to do, learn all kinds of things and actually go through school. And they wanted to better themselves. And you couldn't tell how old they were. But, but they were probably about the same age as the women in New York, like they're forties, I'd say.
So I told a story of the women in Ethiopia to the women in New York, and the women in New York, you know, and I was crying. I was a complete basket case and everybody was crying at the end. And then I said, There's seven of you and seven of them. Do you think we could do something that would be a collaboration, a co-equal collaboration? Not that you have everything, and they have nothing because they have strengths, courage, they speak the local language, they're committed to educate themselves. They have been through very deep grief so that deepens the soul. They know when their cattle are thirsty by the color of their fur. They know things. They know how to navigate a corrupt government. They know things that are absolutely critical. They have assets, real assets for ending hunger in Ethiopia.
This is during the Hunger project years. And the women in, in New York, you know, they had a lot of assets too. They had money, they could get to people in Congress. They had, you know, some of them private planes, you know, they had all kinds of stuff, material assets, but they were impoverished in their soul. And the women in Ethiopia were so strong and so courageous. And their inner life was so resilient that they were still alive. And so I put these seven women and these seven women together, but in a way that they saw each other as co-equals, as equals coming together. And, there was nothing charitable about it. It was solidarity, it was partnership. And the women in New York had, you know, needed something to do with their lives that was meaningful. And this was just incredible for them.
And they brought their children to Ethiopia and, you know, it was, it was amazing. And the women in Ethiopia, you know, after all this years later, I can tell you that they went all the way through school, you know, kindergarten, all the way. They're in their forties. Four of them I still know about. Three of them have PhDs. Can you imagine that? PhDs, and one is a lawyer, and then the other three I lost track of. But one is head of a scientific institute about the environment in Ethiopia. So she has no children anymore, that this is her life and she's brilliant. Another one is a minister in the government, government's in trouble right now, but she's still a minister. Another one is the head of a huge university. And then the attorney has one of the leading law firms now in Ethiopia working on women's rights. And the women in New York made that possible for the women in Ethiopia. The women in Ethiopia made possible for women in New York, in some cases to leave in a very abusive marriage, in other cases, to raise their children in a way that they didn't become monsters, entitled monsters because they had these relationships in Africa. They're running foundations. They're just flourishing. So it's an example of, I can't even remember your question, but nobody was sacrificing, Everybody was contributing. Nobody was not included in the transformation. They included themselves. And one of the things we do sometimes with our eagerness to be everything to everybody as women, is we are do everything for everyone else and then we just collapse from exhaustion because we forgot to include ourselves. We forgot to eat, we forgot to sleep, we forgot to get a massage, we forgot to take care of ourselves. So it's very typical for women, but it's really a powerful thing to realize that in making the world work for everyone and everything, with no one and nothing left out is not you over here and the world over there. That's here.
ELISE:
Yeah. And those paradigm shifts are so important. I love this is a teaching by Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, that I think about all the time. She says, “helping, fixing and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as a whole.” And she talks about “When we help, we may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give them. We may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity, and wholeness. When I help, I am very aware of my own strength, but we don't serve with our strength. We serve with ourselves. We draw from all of our experiences, our limitations serve our wounds, serve even our darkness can serve the wholeness in us serves the wholeness in others and the wholeness of life.” That's so powerful. It's beautiful.
LYNNE:
Which book is that from?
ELISE:
I don't know. I read it in Roshi Joan Halifax's book. And it's funny, I have My Grandfather's Blessings on my bedside table. I don't know, I'll let you know which.
LYNNE:
Which one of Roshi’s is that in?
ELISE:
That's in Standing at the Edge.
LYNNE:
Wow.
ELISE:
That's such a beautiful idea, and that yet we live in this fixing and helping culture that's not inclusive of the self, might be giving of the self, but in a way that there are unintended consequences to that. So I love that idea of just service and seeing the other as whole.
LYNNE:
Yeah, wow, I should have put that in my book. It's too late <laugh>.
ELISE:
Dang it. I know you're off to the printers. But thank you for your books. Thank you for your service. And there's something, obviously the stand that you take is the stand for all of us. You yourself are showing your work as a model for how to move throughout the world, which I take a lot of inspiration and solace in and it's these subtle shifts that you make: The difference between change and transformation, the difference between taking a stand and taking a position, the difference between humility and modesty. You know, it brings the level of consciousness, I think, to all those microsteps or are ways of seeing ourselves. That's so incredibly powerful because that's what it is, right? Like tiny shifts, tiny little shifts as we reorient.
LYNNE:
Exactly. Yeah. Tiny, but monumental in their impact.
ELISE:
Yeah.
LYNNE:
You know, when you think of climate crisis happening to us, you're the victim of it. If you think of it as happening for us to help us make a course correct, that one little word changes the way you relate to this huge thing that we're facing, all of us. And it becomes a great teaching rather than a great, horror. And it'll still hurt. It's still going to be tough, but then you're inspired to deal with it rather than run from it. So it makes a huge difference.
ELISE:
And you write, you know, oh, this is an Alex Stepin quote that you include how optimism is a political act, “those who benefit from the status quo, perfectly happy for us to think nothing is going to get any better. In fact, these days cynicism is obedience.” But sort of going to the whole conversation of taking that stand and being for something rather than just against, is an optimistic action.
LYNNE:
Yeah. Right. Well, you're definitely another Pro-activist.
ELISE:
Pro-activist? Yes.
LYNNE:
A Proactivist, an activist. For not against. And you are too.
ELISE:
Thank you. I love that, Pro-activist. That's a good word. <laugh>. Well thank you for everything. Hopefully we can speak again and everyone needs to get your book. It'll be foundational for a lot of people who want to do things a little differently and are looking for guidance on how.
LYNNE:
Yeah. Good. Well, they can order it now. And I don't know when now is in terms of when this will air, but it's orderable, Living a Committed Life. And I hope people really, not only buy it, but they also read it and live it.
ELISE:
They’ll read it. It's very readable. Thank you, Lynn.
ELISE:
I’d like to think of myself as a pro-activist, I loved that term. And it can be hard, as she said, particularly in the context of everything that is happening here and around the world. And I think we can look at the fact that it’s happening all around the world as another example of those cosmic death pains, so that we go back into the womb, come out anew, that we’re all experiencing. These aren’t isolated events, this is something that’s global on scale. And, we went over it a little quickly, so I wanted to go back to it, but this difference between transformation and change, and why I think that the slight shift in language that she uses is so powerful. We talk a lot about change, and sure, we want change in some context. It’s a totally inadequate word, but it suggests that what came before is inherently “wrong,” “bad”—The wrong direction. And I think as we try to acknowledge so that we can process fully where we’ve been, so that we can honor it for the way that it’s shaped us in the here and now, we need to think about something that’s a bit bigger than change, a bit more all encompassing, rather than just “oh we took that wrong turn, so we’re going to take a right turn.” That doesn’t really metabolize history, in a way, it’s sort of just trying to move away from the things that we might just not like about ourselves, either as people or as a country, or as humanity. It suggests, “oh yes, those were vile things, and we’re in a new direction,” rather than actually taking the time to recognize and integrate where we’ve been.
So she says: “Transformation has a completely different dynamic than change. Transformation doesn’t accuse the past or current situation of being wrong, bad, or undesirable. Rather transformation shifts the perspective, such that what so or what came before suddenly makes sense. It embraces the current reality and has it make sense in a new light. Transformation actually completes the past, makes sense of the present, and generates a future that blossoms what’s so now. It turns what is deemed as not useful or not right into the perfect platform or pathway into the next space. It is respectful, rather than critical. Affirms, rather than denies. Includes, rather than excludes. It becomes a platform which we take the next leap.” This is a hard distinction, of course, because there are so many things in our personal past and collective past that fill us with shame and that we would love to undo or have had never happened at all. And yet, it did. It’s the truth. And denying it isn’t getting us anywhere, either. So I am here for the transformation, less so for just change. Thanks for listening.
