This past week I’ve been revisiting Dear Folks Letters by Donella “Dana” Meadows for inspiration.
Dana begins her letters with scenes from her immediate surrounding — a tragic opera live on the radio, a rainy Sunday morning with the “place sound[ing] like a tuberculosis ward,” at an airport waiting to board a plane, the birth of five calves. Her letters are a perfect reminder to stay connected to the here-and-now before we turn to weightier social issues.
And speaking of staying grounded in reality, here’s Dana urging her students to explore their beliefs:
I never tell them what I think, and I constantly poke them to explore to the core not only what they think, but why they do. Why do they believe the assumptions they believe? Why do they value what they value? I drive them nuts. They write heroically in their papers that we must preserve the biosphere for future generations, and I scrawl: Why? They tell me they believe that the earth’s resources are finite; I ask Why do you believe that?
