Posts

Showing posts with the label learning by doing

Featured Post

Stop Trying to Build Unity—Start Stripping Away the Heavy Noise

Image
Stop Trying to Build Unity—Start Stripping Away the Heavy Noise We’ve been sold a lie about unity. We’ve been conditioned to believe that building community means adding more to an already exhausted life—more meetings, more emotional labor, more managing other people's chaos while holding your own together with duct tape and willpower. That isn't Umoja. That's martyrdom. In Black America, our survival history taught us to construct thick, impenetrable walls around our spirits. We call it "hyper-independence." We wear "I do it all on my own" like a badge of honor, while inside, we are burdened, exhausted, and stuck in cycles of fear, anger, and isolation. We stack blame, shame, and guilt like rust on pure silver, then wonder why we’ve lost our shine. Here is the hard truth: Umoja is not an addition; it is a subtraction. Through the Gye-Nyame Journey system, we practice via negativa —the power of stripping away what was never meant to be there in the first...

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

Image
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...