The world does not need to be a better place

[Music]

i come from a land of paradox

venezuela is a place in which mystery

and mystery co-exist hand in hand

it’s the place with the biggest proven

oil research

reserves in the world nonetheless every

day

more and more people are going to the

trash to look for their next meal

it’s also a place in which before being

dispossessed by your cell phone

the friendly robert might ask you if you

wish to keep your sim card

venezuela is also a place in which you

can never be

100 certain if you will return home at

night

you might either be kidnapped killed or

are just partying really hard into the

next day

making sense of life in such a

paradoxical place

was always very hard for me trying to

understand

that i existed within so many

contradictions

drove me to desperate attempts to try to

understand the world i lived in

the world we live in shapes our reality

or shapes our views of reality and

existence and therefore

shape the possibilities that we have for

existing within these worlds

convinced by the idea that if i

understood the place i live within

i could eventually figure out a way of

changing it

led me to understand that i could do so

by studying

the laws that govern that country

little did i know at that time that

paradoxes

weren’t meant to be solved so stubbornly

i made

my way to law school and the more i

studied

the more i understood that i was missing

out on something big

societies are much more complex and

interconnected

than what we understand them to be so

i thought well i’ll just study

everything i need to study in order to

understand it in order to change it so i

studied psychology became a

yoga teacher permaculture and a bunch of

other stuff

at the end i was really much more

confused

and really exhausted so

that’s when i reluctantly had to accept

for myself

that i was no longer able to live in

paradox

and that’s when i decided to come to

germany

so when i arrived in germany one of the

first

words that i understood and got

acquainted with

was welch matt’s this was a lot a big

deal for me

this word made me understand the

feelings that i had left back home

and it also made me understand that i

was that i had finally

arrived in a country that understood

this feeling so well

that it had a word for it the world

belch meds

means for those of you that might not be

aware of it

a deep pain for the world and this word

was coined by the german author john

paul in the 19th century

as a way of him responding to the misery

and longing for order that he felt when

he lived in a century

marked by social upheaval and war

as i said this word was a very very big

deal for me

it helped me make sense of feelings that

i had had since i was a little child

but couldn’t find a way of defining and

it also

made me understand that my feelings and

emotions

play a big big role in the way that i

understand the world

so this led me to then understand

that a lot of the things that i had done

back home in venezuela

were driven by pain and what’s more for

a deep desire

to shut this pain down

when i had realized this i allowed

myself a question

and this question was does the world

actually need

to be a better place

up until then it was obvious for me that

the world needed to be a better place

that things needed to be different and

above all that it was the responsibility

of all of us

to make it so but

the more i sat with this question trying

not to answer it

the more i understood that i had to go

back a couple of steps in my process

because my feelings were telling me

that i should be sad because things were

not good so i thought that as an

imperative or as an un

instruction to just make them better

and when i understood this i understood

what was at the root of my very precious

belgians

and that is a deep lack of acceptance

of what is and that’s actually

where my story begins trying to

understand

why it was so hard to me for except to

accept the world as it is

i found a lot of help in elizabeth

cooler ross

and her work around grief so grief

is usually the processes that we go into

or go

or go past or pass through when either

somebody that we love dies

or we had a relationship or we’re forced

or decide to leave our countries from

one

for for one decision or not for one

reason or the other

or when we have our worldview shattered

also for

many reasons so i

made my way to study this process just

to understand a little bit

why my lack of acceptance was so high

and this is a little bit how the process

goes

we go into five stages first we go into

denial

and denial is usually this place in

which whatever is happening or has

happened

is shot out of our cognition so we

usually drive ourselves into little

places or bubbles and watch that in

which that reality

has yet not fully permeated then

slowly we move into anger anger is a

little bit better because it

means that at least we’re allowing

the notion of what is happening or has

happened to coming

but we use all of our energies to fight

against it

and then slowly we move ourselves into

bargaining

a place that seems much more rational of

course this

usually consists of very absurd

negotiations between ourselves and some

sort of higher entered

entity be it god or alter ego or

whatever higher entity that we appeal to

and usually in bargaining we go into

things like if this person doesn’t die

or comes back to life i will become a

better person

a lot of us spend a lot of time in

bargaining

but as we realize the absurdity of those

negotiations

and we start to accept that we don’t

have control over everything

we slowly see ourselves moving into

depression

depression is when the feelings and

emotions associated what has was

with what is happening start to make

their way into our body

it might take us a long time to get out

of this stage

but when we’re finally ready to do so

we see ourselves arriving at acceptance

understanding this process really made

me

or really helped me in understanding

that i myself had undergone

a very long very unconscious and maybe a

bit of an unconventional grieving

process

what i was grieving for for as long as i

could remember

was having my world views shattered one

at the time

every time that i understood something

about the world or that the world made

sense for me in one way to another or

another

something would happen that would

shatter my worldly

so in studying this process as i said

i saw myself actually kind of ready

but quite reluctantly walking in or

arriving

into acceptance and what i understood

by arriving into acceptance is that only

when we accept the way things are can we

start to drive meaningful change

and don’t get me wrong when i say drive

change

it does not mean changing the

circumstances of what has happened or

or is happening it means changing the

way that we understand

and we respond to those circumstances

acceptance does not mean disregarding

what is happening it does not mean

ignoring it

and it does not mean resigning to it

acceptance gives us

gives us power resignation leaves us

powerless

acceptance means in some way

acknowledging our desire to fight

against what has happened or is

happening

validating that desire but nonetheless

re-entering into that reality

with a full understanding of what is

going on

acceptance is kind of

coming to grounds with what is or taking

out blocks

of going into other stages and because i

don’t want to listen to myself talk so

much i want to invite

you to do an exercise because i think

our bodies can help us understand how

acceptance

of course this is a metaphor but it will

help us understand how acceptance could

start to feel like

so it’s voluntary please feel free to

join

if you want you can say sits you can sit

in your seats

and it’s very simple so you just have to

stretch your hands in front of you

then switch the direction of your hands

so both hands facing each other

now the right hand comes on top of the

left hand

and then we’re going to bring our

fingers in and then

we’re going to try to put the back part

of our nails

against our nose i know it’s with it so

it’s harder with the mask but it will

work so now you’re gonna try to unswitch

your fingers oh

shoots okay so most of us are stuck

let go a bit so that’s a little bit how

acceptance works now we have two options

we completely disregard the exercise or

we accept that we might be stuck

and give it another try so again bring

your hands in front of you

then switch the direction of your hands

then right hand again in front of left

hand

but try to notice the position of your

fingers and usually

if you switch the position of your

fingers direct completely

you might be able to get it yeah so if

you had it like this at the beginning do

it

the other way around and again put the

back part of your nails against your

nose

[Music]

cool

well i know that accepting somebody’s

death is not as easy as this but this is

a little bit of the process that our

brains might undergo

and the reason that i’m bringing this

exercise is just to show

or to invite you to explore what happens

when we start to accept where we are at

where we admit when we admit that we

might that we’re stuck or might be stuck

we might just switch another finger if

we admit

that the world is a certain way then

we might start to readapt the way that

we respond to that

and don’t take me wrong i’m not saying

that this is easy the exercise was just

a metaphor

but what i am trying to invite you to do

is to understand

that when we accept things are we can

re-enter those realities in a different

way

and this gives us a lot of power i

believe

and regardless of if you’re ready to

accept if you want to accept

i believe this is a skill or a thinking

process

or a process that is going to be helpful

for us especially in this very confusing

times

be it climate change covet trump losing

jobs the next recession or whatever it

is that you’re faring

accepting where we’re standing allows us

to reenter those realities or our

realities with a different

sense of of power

if not to change things the way things

are

yes to understand how we respond to them

and amongst the thousands of things

i’ve had to come to accept i just want

to share two with you

and this is because i think many of you

might find them there to you

the first one which i accept quite

reluctantly

is that the older i get the harder it is

for me to lose weight

sorry the second one is

that as we speak thousands of species

are going extinct

according to the last last wildlife

report

2020 between 1970s

and 2016 the population

sizes of mammals amphibians fish and

birds

has reduced in 68 percent

and human activity and our consumption

patterns have played a big role in these

numbers

i choose to accept this and i choose to

accept that i

too have played a part in this that my

existence on this planet and my

consumption patterns

have contributed to death to the death

and disappearance

of thousands of species

but when i accept this a new sense of

responsibility and possibility comes to

me

and this is why i used i choose to use

the law

to respond to this fact in two ways

firstly

by helping businesses understand or

reminding businesses

that they’ll that their sole purpose

goes much beyond

generating profit that they have a

responsibility

to the environments upon which they

depend

and if we reinterpret current laws in

the

spirit of the times and that’s what laws

are for and meant to

it’s very easy to see how laws are

already expecting businesses to

understand this and don’t get me wrong

i know that there’s millions of

businesses becoming more aware of their

impact on the planet

but this is not happening as fast enough

as it needs to happen

and therefore i choose to use the law in

another way

and that is i choose to use the law and

project

i’m sorry and support projects that

are helping mountains rivers ecosystems

and species

have legal personality in and on

themselves

that means that we humans can go to

court on behalf of rivers

and mountains and ecosystems and have

their rights defended on their sole

basis that they have a right to exist

because if

because if many of us still think

that the planet is primarily for human

consumption

then the law can reminder can remind us

that that is not so

that ecosystems species mountains and

rivers

have a right to exist on their own basis

and if this is going to sink in via

court rulings and judging

judges calling us out then that’s how i

decide it makes sense for me to respond

to the fact

of these extensions that we’re facing

so now after going through

this little talk i invite you to the

question again

does the world need to be a better place

honestly i don’t know i don’t know if

there is even a right answer to this

question

but what i do know based on experience

and by studying the work

of thinkers and activists that i admire

is that if any of you believe that

things need to be better

they need to be different accepting

where they are

is the place to start driving meaningful

change

and now before ending i would like to do

a little invitation to you

another one and that is to invite your

sense of smell

into the conversation and all of you

have a little envelope underneath your

seats i would like to invite you to

unwind it or pick it up

so it’s pasted on your seats at the at

the beginning so it’s underneath the

chair

no it’s it’s pasted underneath where

you’re sitting

yeah so where you’re sitting there’s a

little

just underneath your chair is paste it

on the on the bottom

yes okay if you have a neighbor that has

not gotten it please

let them know how word is okay cool and

now i would like you

to first listen to me one second please

don’t read the paper

if you have not done so already what i

want you to do now

is to smell the paper and close your

eyes and just

smell the little piece of paper that i

gave you you can read it later the

message is

for you just to take home so if you open

the envelope and take out the little

piece of paper

then you can smell it yeah you have to

open the envelope

take out the paper and smell it

just close your eyes and go with that

smell

and now i just want to leave you with

one idea

this and this is a little bit how

acceptance might start to feel

when we come into our bodies we just

kind of reconnect

with the way things are and by doing so

i just want to come back to if

accepting the way things are in order

for us to be able to changing seems like

a paradox and that

seems a little bit uncomfortable or

confusing

then that’s what i want to leave you

with thank you

you