What The Tree of Life Can Teach Us About Transitions

[Music]

emboola said

to see the light of the world is to be

the baobab tree today

i’m going to talk to you about how the

baobab trees

can teach us to see transitions in a new

light

have you ever seen a babob tree no

worries if you haven’t

my knowledge they’re not that common in

the states

now you’ve seen your first one baobabs

are a prehistoric species that can live

up to 5000 years and they’re venerated

throughout africa

the caribbean south and central america

in africa baobabs play a central role in

many traditions and are known as the

tree of life

because of the sustenance they give

they’re also called

upside down tree because of the way

their branches

splay making them look like roots i saw

my first one in 2016 on the beautiful

island of saint croix

in the u.s virgin islands a co-worker

and i decided to get some fresh air

at lunch and we ended up going down this

little road at the bottom of a mountain

and all of a sudden this ginormous tree

appears

on the left it had to be as wide as the

house next to it

and six times as tall and i am not

kidding these trees grow up to be a

hundred

feet tall the one that i saw looked like

the spirit mother of all

elephants it was majestic so we pull

over

we get out to inspect and my friend

she’s a local

and she tells me

what she had been told by her old people

who had been told by their old people

and that is that the trees were brought

over as seeds by enslaved africans

centuries ago the tree that we saw

started as a seed braided into an

enslaved girl’s hair

her mother gave it to her to protect her

just before she was taken

the trees grow big enough to act as a

house

and they also grow fruit rich with

nutrients

but the most important thing about these

trees

is that many people throughout the

diaspora

believed that these trees were able to

carry

spirits between this world and others

so no matter where the girl was

her mother would be able to connect with

her

and she would be able to connect with

her ancestors

she wouldn’t be lost now i have no

romantic

notions of slavery but i was struck by

the idea that something so beautiful

could have such

tragic provenance you see

i was at one of those transitional

points in my life where i was trying to

sift beauty from my own little tin cup

of tragedy

my tragedy was the practice of law

in america’s criminal justice system

i was just coming off a 10-year stint as

a public defender where i handled

everything from shoplifting to homicide

and to say it was grueling work is an

understatement

on the one hand you’ve got to deal with

difficult

people overzealous prosecutors

harsh old testament judges and people

who’ve been accused of some really

heinous crimes

on the other hand you’ve got some

seriously

good people who could have been

absolutely amazing if they just

made better choices if they’d had maybe

another 50

on tuesday or if they’d had somebody to

listen to them and give them good advice

on monday morning

the thing was crushing as public

defender work was for me

leaving was one of the hardest decisions

i ever had to make

and that’s because i defined myself

as a public defender and i also

felt like i was giving up on people

leaving them to be

eviscerated by a broken

system that has no empathy

but i had to get honest with myself

about the toll the work was taking on me

at that time for my own peace of mind i

had to leave

i had to redefine myself based on a

dream

and it was there in that moment that i

fully appreciated how hard it is to make

a change

even if it’s something that you’ve been

planning hoping for

praying for wishing for when you’re

standing there

on the ledge that’s when transition

feels impossible

it feels completely upside down kind of

like that baobab tree

and that’s because stepping into the

unknown is scary disorienting

and i think part of the reason is that

even though we’ve been told a million

times by a million different people

that changes life’s constant that change

is inevitable

a lot of us on some level still feel

like

change means failure and on another

level

we react to change like it’s a kind of

death

and no change can lead to rebirth

nature has shown us

rebirth death is not a prerequisite to

rebirth and

rebirth can be a very beautiful thing

so impossibility be damned i made the

leap

and decided to answer a decades-old

calling to write fiction

one of my short stories my first short

story ended up being nominated for a

push cart

and thanks to the awesome mentorship of

two lovely writers

natalie dunbar and karen white owens and

also thanks to my writing accountability

group

my first novel is due out in 2021 i made

that leap and so far it’s really working

out for me

and i think the first thing that we need

to do to successfully

navigate transitions is to really

come to terms with the fact that change

is a natural part of growth

in president-elect biden’s november 7th

speech to the nation

he talks about how america is at yet

another inflection

point moments in time when we make

decisions about who we

are and who we want to be he points to

abraham lincoln in 1860 saving the

nation

he points to fdr in 1932 with a new deal

jfk in 1960 obama 12 years ago

biden said a country is defined by its

inflection points

and the same holds true for people one

thing

most public defenders do is get to know

their clients

in 10 years i handled thousands of cases

and i had the honor

of sitting down with thousands of people

and getting to hear their stories

getting to find out how they had end up

ended up with me

and one thing i gleaned from all of

those stories is that like a country

different people’s lives are made up of

different transitions and moments in

time when we make decisions about who we

are and who we want to be and it’s

critical

that we navigate them mindfully so

another big thing that we have to do is

accept that change is a really hard

thing

to wrap your mind around sometimes we’re

so

rooted in past and fixated on the future

that we miss the fact that now

is a time of great change and that

change

like time is an ever-moving current

according to the u.s census library in

1900 there were 4.8 million women in the

workforce

now there are 80 million women in the

workforce

in 1975 there were 19 women in congress

now there are about 127 women in

congress

in 1998 nobody i knew had a cell phone

in 2020 i don’t know anyone without one

and there are all sorts of great

articles and ted talks about how

technology is changing the way we work

think and live in fact technology is

having

such a big impact on our understanding

of the world that according to the book

the half-life of facts

fifty percent of information published

this year in physics

will be wrong in 13.7 years

in math it’ll be wrong in 9.17 years in

psychology

it’s 7.15 years change is ubiquitous

so what does that have to do with a

little girl in a baobob tree

i took a few things from that story that

i think will be helpful with transitions

whether it’s living on your own for the

first time leaving a job

a marriage getting sick but before i

begin

there’s an old african proverb

wisdom is like a baobab tree

no one individual can embrace it

there are many things to take from that

story

i will share my four

the first bring your seed with you

the seat is different for everyone for

some it could be a word

a song a prayer you have to figure out

what yours is and be true to it

for the little girl the seed represented

her mother’s love

her feeling of being protected her

connection to home

her memory of the strength and freedom

she knew before she was enslaved that

was a huge

thing then the slave owners didn’t want

you to remember your

culture or your home they wanted you to

forget

all vestiges of your humanity because

that was evidence of your freedom and

your internal power

name your seed and speak it aloud every

day if your seed is peace if your seed

is grace if your seed is self-love if

your seed is freedom

speak it aloud daily the law of

repetition is that repeating behavior

makes it more powerful repeating phrases

helps your brain

to solidify connections repeating

thoughts will help them to be absorbed

by the subconscious

number two like the baobob

reach for the light light is

consciousness light is creativity

light is life move if you aren’t close

enough to it

easier said than done i get it step one

in moving when you’re paralyzed by fear

indecision one of 857 million different

kinds of pain

visualize it and go big nobody can hear

you thinking

look to the greats for inspiration

neuropsychologia published a study that

showed

imagining ourselves moving certain parts

of our bodies

trains those muscles almost as well as

actually exercising

actual movement so you want to be the

next

i don’t know madonna

visualize yourself up on stage

singing dancing with a bunch of talented

dancers

you want to be the next einstein

visualize yourself

solving a blackboard filled with

mind-blowing equations whatever your

goal is

movement starts here and direction comes

from here

so remain open remain flexible

visualize yourself reaching your goal

visualize yourself

grasping it feel it in your hands warm

and

whole and come what may continue

to reach for your light

number three don’t be afraid to let dead

branches break off

new ones will grow if you let them allow

yourself to be the person you need to be

to get to where you want to go it’s kind

of like reincarnation

but it’s intracarnation which means

being multiple iterations of yourself in

one lifetime

in detroit we’ve got this great museum

it’s called the detroit institute of

arts

and they’ve got an awesome southeast

asian collection and my favorite piece

in the collection

is a statue of ganesha a hindu god

this god represents one aspect

of the infinite divine which is so

vast that only multiple faces and

iterations of god can give humans an

idea of its vastness

and that’s a good analogy for humans in

one lifetime

we wear many different faces and in

order to get in touch with our

best selves we have to give ourselves

permission to be

all of ourselves and that brings me to

my last

and final point which is strength

when i touched the baobab tree

it was almost as if i could see how

those who came before me

found themselves in the same place

drawing strength

remembering when we were kings

remembering

further even remembering back to when we

were each other

so my final point is to remember

your ancestors keep them alive by

telling their stories

borrow their strength if you have to

if you don’t remember your ancestors

i’ll share one of mine with you

her name is juan tereloke she was a

woman who wouldn’t let her seed

go enslaved in saint martin this

strong-willed woman refused

to be bound one day she escaped

to the mountains but life was not meant

to be easy for one teddy lokay

after a vigorous hunt the slavers found

her

and when the slavers found her when they

captured her

they beat her they tortured her

and they tried to make an example of her

to the other slaves

how they hacked off her breast

leaving one so that she could suckle the

master’s child

the slavers thought that this would

break lokay

but they were wrong it did not break

lokay because she was determined to

reach for her own light

their darkness only made her taste

for freedom stronger

so when one tereloke healed she ran

again

and this time the slavers did not find

her

she set up camp deep in the mountains

amidst the baobab trees

and like our own black moses she came

back to the plantation

many times and freed many more slaves

for all who hear this story and allow

their hearts to be touched

you too can draw strength from ancestor

tereloke

why because that something inside of you

that identified with lokay

and the unnamed baobab girl will guide

you

find your seed reach for the light don’t

be afraid to let things go

know the strength that lives inside of

you

it won’t be easy if being a public

defender taught me

one thing it’s that literally

figuratively we’re all one step away

from or

living inside of our own prisons

but we need to recognize that we do have

the opportunity to free ourselves to be

as

many versions of ourselves as we need to

become in order to be the best version

of ourselves

they say mother mary’s tears turned into

carnations when she watched jesus on the

cross

pain turned into flowers and a million

different kinds of beauty

were born of that moment i think we

all have the potential to be like those

tears

to transform and so

as you move forward on your journey with

all of its various inflection points and

transitions

i leave you with one last african

proverb

and that is to get lost

is to learn the way thank you