Fourth in my 2021 summer compilation series is inspired by Tene Edwards’ beautiful poem “Know Your Worth.” I love these nine wise reminders about why both we and the people who surround us matter. Pretty images, attributions plus 24 bonus quotes via #8 below. Quick reference guide here:
You must find the courage to leave the table if respect is no longer being served.
Some talk to you in their free time, and some free their time to talk to you. Learn the difference.
you flow differently when the right people are watering you
My identity is a superpower - not an obstacle.
Life is more about consistency than about intensity.
12 levels of friendship in Arabic.
Cooperation is humanity’s superpower. (This entire op-ed is worth a read.)
You know you are in a community of practice when it changes your practice.
your willingness to believe in yourself (is a bridge between you, and where you want to be)
#1
“You must find the courage to leave the table
if respect is no longer being served.”
#2
Quote source currently a mystery to me (please email if you know)
“Some talk to you in their free time, and some free their time to talk to you.
Learn the difference.”
#3
“you flow differently when the right people are watering you”
Via LinkedIn
#4
“My identity is a superpower - not an obstacle. ”
#5
“Life is more about consistency than about intensity.”
#6
“12 LEVELS OF FRIENDSHIP
In Arabic, there are 12 levels of friendship.
1. Zameel — someone you have a nodding acquaintance with
2. Jalees — someone you’re comfortable sitting with for a period of time
3. Sameer — you have good conversation with them; this is where things get serious
4. Nadeem — a drinking companion (just tea) that you might call when you’re free
5. Sahib — someone who’s concerned for your wellbeing; now we’re in the real ranks of friendship
6. Rafeeq — someone you can depend upon. You’d probably go on holiday with them
7. Sadeeq — a true friend, someone who doesn’t befriend you for an ulterior motive
8. Khaleel — an intimate friend, someone whose presence makes you happy
9. Anees — someone with whom you’re really comfortable and familiar
10. Najiyy — a confidant, someone you trust deeply
11. Safiyy — your best friend, someone you’ve chosen over other friends
12. Qareen — someone who’s inseparable from you. You know how they think (and vice versa)”
In Arabic, there are 12 levels of friendship. Most of our 'friends' are level 5 or below, and many of us don't have a single level 12 friend 🤯
— Taariq Ismail (@TaariqIsmail) June 9, 2021
Here are the levels:
1. Zameel - someone you have a nodding acquaintance with
⬇️
#7 (A few excerpts)
Unlike all the other items in this compilation, I discovered Ezra Klein’s February 25, 2021 op-ed in the New York Times directly and, while I selected one quote for this post, highlighted five passages for further thinking.
“Cooperation is humanity’s superpower.”
It is not just our energy infrastructure that is unprepared for climate change. It is our political infrastructure. It is our social infrastructure. It is our psyches. There’s long been a hope that repeated climate crises will force Republicans to enlist in the fight to stop, or slow, climate change. How can you ignore the crisis when it is your constituents who are frozen, your home that is underwater? But what we saw in Texas is the darker timeline — a doom loop of climate polarization, where climate crises lead, paradoxically, to a politics that’s more desperate for fossil fuels, more dismissive of international or even interstate cooperation.
The most common mistake in politics is to believe there is some level of suffering that will force responsible governance. There isn’t.
“When people are presented with a crisis like in Texas, they often grasp for stability,” Julian Brave NoiseCat, vice president of policy and strategy at Data for Progress, told me. “This is something the right is good at — they offer the security of tradition, of the familiar.” The irony is that on this issue, it is progressives who are the true conservatives. We are the ones who want to conserve the climate that the entirety of human civilization has known, who believe that the planetary conditions that fostered all of our institutions and social structures are worth preserving. “If you want to stand athwart the history of emissions and yell ‘stop,’” NoiseCat says, “you need to do really transformational things.”
Transformation at that scale requires cooperation — between individuals, and cities, and industries, and regions, and countries. But there is reason to believe a warming world will be a less cooperative world. Here, something former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas said is instructive. “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.” Perry, I should note, most recently served as head of the federal Department of Energy — the same agency whose name he had forgotten when he tried to mark it for elimination in a 2011 Republican presidential debate. You can’t make this stuff up.
Cooperation is humanity’s superpower, and the way we have enlarged our circle — from kin, to tribes, to religions, to countries, to the world — is miraculous. But the conditions under which that cooperation has taken hold are delicate, and like everything else, part of the biophysical system in which we live. We are changing that system in ways we do not understand and with consequences we cannot predict.
#8
“You know you are in a community of practice when it changes your practice.”
Click here (or the LinkedIn article posted below) for 24 BONUS QUOTES via my friend Curtis Ogden’s summary of some “nuggets of wisdom I took from my reading of Perpetual Beta 2020 over the past month, in the form of 20 of Harold’s quotes and 4 quotes from others he references.” LOTS of food for thought here. Curtis’ notes also reminded me of this Zander Grashow image I posted in May.