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I Learn by Doing: A Personal Meditation on the Batak Proverb

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I Learn by Doing: A Personal Meditation on the Batak Proverb "You learn how to cut down trees by cutting them down." — Batak (Batiki) Proverb That line hits different when you’ve lived it. I chose this proverb for Day 3 of Tribal Quotes because it calls out something deep that many of us are missing: the wisdom of experience. Too often, we get stuck in thought, tangled in theory, or lost in the illusion of needing to be fully ready before we act. But this proverb cuts straight through the noise. You want to learn how to cut down trees? Then cut them down. That’s it. No Flight School for Birds Flying is complicated. Aerodynamics, balance, wing structure—it’s not easy. But birds don’t have academies. They learn to fly by flying. We learn to walk by walking. We learn to talk by talking. And we learn to live by living. But somehow, we’ve been convinced that real learning happens only in classrooms, through lectures, in books. Don’t get me wrong—I value study. But too many of...

Revisiting Grace

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  The concept of Grace has weighed heavily on my mind as of late. I was shocked at the power of this simple principle as I looked into it. I was truly acquainted with Grace as I put together the Millennium 7. I had to find a few new principles to use for a character building curriculum that I was putting together for young people.  I first had to research and replace some of the principles that I had always used. This is when I ran into the principle of gratitude. I placed it among many of the principles that I had used from the Nguzo Saba and replaced cooperative economics. I figured Gratitude would be a good replacement for it, and that I would be able to use the basic lessons that I had used for cooperative economics. I began my research and was amazed at where it took me. I began by breaking down the word gratitude and found that it lead to the word grateful. Both of these words meant being thankful. Grateful lead me to the word gracious, which was basically a thankful a...

Gratitude & Grace on the Journey

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On this Journey it is important that we begin to show gratitude for all the blessings that we receive. This is a challenge in a world that seems to want to help you find all that is wrong in your life. Let us take a closer look at this thing gratitude and then talk about an exercise that can help you in finding those bright spots. I know that many of you may think that there are no bright spots, but trust me they are there. Through my research and even more importantly my experience I have learned that the human mind and brain are tools to be used in life. We can train them to seek out certain things in the world. If you chose to seek out things to be grateful for you will find them. Without going into the complicated science of the brain, and what we know of the mind these tools have been shaped by evolution (if you prefer God) to seek out what we want from the world. This effect is the result of us descending from hunter gatherers in the past. Hunters had to be able to read signs,...