On Ubuntu and Empathy

I am because we are.

A few years ago, as a brokenhearted teenager determined to unravel the intricacies of Love, I walked through the streets of my hometown and stumbled across a poster that made me pause in my frantic steps in wonder and awe. Immersed in Ed Sheeran (not my taste now – in case you were wondering), I hoped to find solace and much-needed comfort in the lyrics. Then, the words printed on the poster on the opposite side of the road drew me in. I unplugged my earphones and squinted my eyes to read what I could have sworn was a right-time-right-place message guiding me along my path.

The words on the poster read Io esisto perché tu esisti, which translates as I exist because you exist or I am because you are.

Although It took me a few seconds to grasp its literal meaning, I remember experiencing an inexplicable resonance to it the instant I read it - as if somehow suddenly everything (not so much cognitively but more spiritually and esoterically) made sense. I investigated who had placed it there and why by giving it a closer look. There was a hashtag (#iambecauseyouare). It must be some activism thing, I thought. But it simply made no sense to me why something so romantic (that was my perception at the time) would be stuck on a wall as if it were political and social propaganda.

I carried walking, swinging my arms with a wide grin because I thought I was the luckiest person in the world for noticing that writing. I knew it meant I was forever connected to my unrequited interest, even if the rejection had left me cold and in the darkness.

Initially, the words became a mantra and carved a space in my heart, but shortly after, my mind forgot about it. Fast forward a few years, and “I am because you are” has made its way into my life again, taking on a new meaning.

As a mindfulness teacher with mixed heritage, I have been eager to expand my vision beyond Western secularised mindfulness and its hyper-focus on the individual. As some of you may already know, mindfulness may support people with focus, stress management, anxiety, emotion regulation, and general well-being, but there is more. With time, as the practice deepens, the intention may shift along a continuum from self-regulation to self-exploration to self-liberation.

Intention and time fertilise the soil, and we can cultivate a greater sense of interconnectedness with other living beings and the planet Earth. The understanding that we are all connected by a shared humanity was well-known to our ancestors and is embedded in many wisdom traditions across the planet today. Now, how we may honour this way of being is my most sincere intention. After all, have we not all desired - at some point - either quietly, unknowingly, achingly, or assertively to break the bars that keep us apart and bathe in the sameness underlying our undeniable differences and individuality?

At the International Conference on Mindfulness this year (ICM 2024), I leaped at the opportunity of a workshop exploring how mindfulness relates to the wisdom of ancient traditions, and, of course, Ubuntu, rooted in African philosophy, had to be included in our discussion.

In a literal sense, Ubuntu means I am because we are. It recognises that our relationships with others shape our sense of self. When we live by this philosophy, we understand that each person is a person because of other people and that we cannot be separate from nature, society, culture, community, relationships, or the environment. Through this lens, we acknowledge, validate, and encourage the uniqueness and complexity of personal identity but also recognise that each individual is connected to others inextricably.

The meaning of connection often gets lost in translation. Some may refer to connection as the wondrous finding that two or more people share similar experiences, backgrounds, interests, values, responsibilities, friends, and family. Others might refer to connection as moving beyond relatability into empathy. While being able to relate to some of the same things might spark an initial connection, we are only scratching the surface of what is possible in human relationships.

It is not possible to talk about Ubuntu and interconnection among beings without discussing the role of empathy because the nourishing and mineral-rich water of empathy is what allows a connection to flourish.

Empathy offers a bridge in light of our individuality, which enriches but can sometimes separate us. It offers us an opportunity to recognise ourselves in the other beyond constructs of similarity and dissimilarity. It is also an innate capacity we all have, as human beings, to feel what another is feeling despite having walked different paths. And is that not a gift? The gift of our presence, I mean. As the Russian critic Bhaktin would say – when we look into the eyes of another, it is having that gaze returned to us that humanises us. Empathy reminds us that, though our paths are inevitably unique, and we might sometimes walk alone, we do not have to be lonely as we can meet each other wherever we are and however we are.

In the realms of empathy, we do not see one another through rose-tinted glasses or grim lenses but through impartial eyes and a warm gaze. Despite the undeniable differences, the unwavering presence of another human being reminds us that we are not alone and that we each carry the same unanswered questions, insecurities, fears, yearnings, pain, suffering, needs, and desires – and that our individual journey is also a collective one.

We kneel in the presence of the other. We ask with the innocence of a child, I wonder what it means to be you. And they say, Sit here with me, I will show you. So, we sit by their side in the darkness and the light. We offer them the gift of our presence. We tune our whole being and body to them as if our body were a sacred instrument, and suddenly, we hear a melody. It moves us as if it were created for and by us, although it does not come from us or them. Together, we bow at the mystery of this shared human existence. We wonder what it is all about.

And, silently, we both think, This. This is what it is all about.

May you be well,

Asia