#82: Mother Teresa and Escaping the Gravitational Orbit of Interdependence

I love that Pip has inspired me to view and acknowledge the world and strangers and circumstances around me from a mindset of community. Like when someone waits an extra six seconds at the library to hold the door for the person behind him. Or when I notice someone drop their phone at the gym while on the tread mill and a stranger runs to go pick it up so the person doesn't have to stop her workout to grab it. Or like when I'm walking my roommate's dog and five different random people come over to me to pet her and then have a full conversation with me. And I just love that feeling of interdependence and community, and I am so glad Pip has influenced me to become more sensitive and appreciative of it. 

- Amanda

Pip Coburn    pcoburn@coburnventures.com

MOTHER TERESA AND ESCAPING THE GRAVITATIONAL ORBIT OF INTERDEPENDENCE

I remember it right after September 11th, 2001.

I remember it during the financial crisis of 2008-2009. 

I remember it here in New York after Hurricane Sandy amidst the widespread ongoing power outages.

What I remember is that people were… really nice and caring with one another.

I remember people in our town of Pleasantville actively lending their generators to others in town who were still without power.  Board games by candle light.  We sorta hoped the power would never return.

It felt like… we were in it together. 

We were all interdependent and it felt good to me and maybe it felt good to you too.

I LOVE that experience.  Interdependent and embracing it.

Surprisingly – at least with this in mind – we all seem to work hard to escape interdependence.

From what I understand about Mother Teresa, she was determined to work and live specifically with the poorest of the poor, not just the poor.  She had a specific reason if I have it right.  She considered that the “poor” still had community and were not poor in a humanity sense at all.  They were in it together.   This is NOT to suggest she thought life is at all easy for the poor but she saw that they have community.

She said, in contrast, the poorest of the poor become untouchables. 

The poorest of the poor include babies left in dumpsters and people laying dying in the streets.

She brought them in so that they might feel the love and compassion of another human being as they died.

About the “West” she worried. 

She considered that exceptional wealth led so many in the West to be humanity poor in that false success significantly included the pursuit of not being dependent on anyone or anything.  Living in a gated community not knowing any of one’s neighbors in an 8000 square foot house with an in-home movie theater might be part of the “dream”. 

Perhaps Mother Teresa might suggest that the pursuit of success in the West might be characterized by:

The attempt to escape from the gravitational orbit of interdependence.

What does this all mean perhaps?

I am not exactly sure. Seems like a conundrum.  For those wishing to generate community, there is not only the human tendency toward separation to design for but additionally a spirit that has widely spread – connected to wealth generation and escaping interdependence – that can also make matters tricky in offering interdependence as an ideal to actually strive for…

…uphill…

…extraordinarily worthwhile…

…one day at a time…

…more ahead…

Pip

Pip's first-person bio: 

More than anything I suspect I am driven by “community”.   Across the past 15 years, I have grown to realize that most any success or fortune I have had in the work I do I have re-invested back into my activities such that I spend more and more of my life with people I adore and admire and just loving being around and working on a whole bunch of things that I am incredibly excited about.   I like to study monumental change at the levels of society, marketplaces, organizations and most significantly… people.  I like to study culture deeply. I like to attempt to create culture. I like processes and helping others advances their processes and being trusted deeply.   My wife Kelly is both supportive and probably confused by what I do for a living which makes two of us.  My greatest joy in my work is when I have the chance to draw from two decades of intense work in order to perhaps help someone have a break through.