connection | Life-Built Poems

UBUNTU (An Un-Seeing Exercise)

Netta Comments 8 comments

The stress of coping with the effects of the global pandemic in 2020 and beyond – social distancing, forced quarantines, and travel restrictions as well as the awkward and unsettling changes in day-to-day living and the resulting changes in our accustomed lifestyles — led many of us to re-examine what makes our own lives meaningful. I suppose it should not come as a surprise that making connections with other people and working on keeping these connections going and growing will…

MULTIPLY THE FUN (An Un-Seeing Exercise)

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Consistently over the years, assorted research has shown that job dissatisfaction is a problem for about two-thirds of the people in America. This “disengagement” has wide-ranging effects. Gallup tells us that this job irritant issue has cost as much as $350 billion a year in “lost productivity.” (It can also suck a soul dry, and turn your life into a desert, but nobody scientific ever mentions that.)

COOL HEAD, KIND HEART

Netta Comments 32 comments

Pono is a Hawaiian word that is usually translated as “righteousness.” It is a bit more than that. It is a way of walking through the world that is centered and balanced. It’s the way a kanaka makua, a mature person, walks. Mary Kawena Puku’i, one of our most beloved elders and an exemplary example of a kanaka makua, worked with Western scholars to document and preserve the nuances of Hawaiian thought. Here’s how she described such a person: “A…