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Parapsychology
Find and Defend Our Quiet Places
Why making the time and space for refection and evaluation are important.
Posted July 30, 2018
Summer is an excellent time of year to focus on finding and defending our quiet places—not so much hammock, family reunion, and beach time (although those are important), but quiet places necessary for reflection and evaluation.
Reflection and evaluation are both terms we banter around and oftentimes use lightly and imprecisely. So, turning to the clarifying Oxford English Dictionary:
Reflection; Senses relating to mental activities
a. The action or process of thinking carefully or deeply about a particular subject, typically involving influence from one’s past life and experiences; contemplation, deep or serious thought or consideration, esp. of a spiritual nature.
Evaluation
1. The action of appraising or valuing (goods, etc.); a calculation or statement of value.
But turning to a different source, from Maori community activists Tamati and Veeshayne Patuwai (husband and wife powerhouse duo), I learned that in Maori the terms for evaluation and reflection are combined. Several years ago when I visited them at Mad Ave* in Auckland, New Zealand, they told me that the Maori word for evaluation means, “To go to a still pond, reflect, be still, look closely, and then tell the truth—first, to ourselves and then to others.”
No matter what our work, professions, families, and communities may be, pause a moment to consider how much better we’d all be if we could find and defend our quiet places. And then tell the truth, first to ourselves and then to others.
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*Mad Ave in Auckland, New Zealand has been instrumental in finding creative, asset-based youth and community-building solutions in an area of North Auckland that had received the negative label of “Mad Ave.” They have the terrific tagline “Activating Community Potential by Any Means Necessary.” Here are some photographs of their work that I took in September, 2015. Community wellbeing through haiku, monster makery, stream restoration, music-making, and public art. That suspended metal bird sculpture in the community/town square is an indigenous version of our Western phoenix rising from the ashes.
