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