Ubuntu

This morning, Archbishop Tutu spoke to the Global Management Class, and everyone was invited to go listen. The class presented a few questions to him.  I was not able to attend, but someone has already posted a quick transcript of Arch’s remarks.  They may not be an exact quote, but they are worth passing on to you.

 

Question:  How did winning the Nobel Peace Prize impact you?

 

Answer:  [Hahaha] Well, we were with a group of 3000 young people in Bali, and one of them asked me what does it take to get a Nobel peace prize. And I said, “it’s quite easy really, you need only three things. You need to have an easy name like ‘Tutu.’

 

At  the time, we were out in the open and it was quite warm and I showed off my legs and said,

“you have to have sexy legs, too.” All I was trying to say  Is that Nobel laureates don’t drop down from heavens, they’re people like you.

 

If you are up early in the morning, you might see Arch out for a walk, pumping his arms and really moving.  He is pretty much always showing off those legs—I don’t think I’ve ever seen him with long pants on.  He laughs easily and often, and we laugh along with him.  And when he shifts, as he does, into serious mode, he has your full attention.

 

He went on to say, “There’s no reason why there shouldn’t be, from among you here, future Nobel laureates.”  And he answered the original question:  The big difference is that people started paying attention to him. His message didn’t change, but his audience did.  Now the President (Reagan) was calling him.  And it was important to the morale of people whose fight for freedom was now validated worldwide.

 

He talked about environmentalism (I’m 82, but I’m not sure how many of you are going to make it to 82 if things don’t change drastically) and he used the concept Ubuntu to talk about how we are all responsible for each other.  Difficult to put into words in our languages, he said, but it means “I am because we are.”  A person is a person because there are other people.  We learn to be human by imitating other humans, and we care for each other and our world because, really, what is the alternative?

 

He did not say what the third quality required for winning a Nobel prize is, but it doesn’t matter.  I’ve got the easy name (“Heath, like the candy”), but am defeated in the sexy legs department.   I’ll just keep watching and reporting.