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