In 2013 I co-released a song called “Mars Today” together with Finnish Hip Hop artists Paleface and Sonjay Beats, and Tanzanian singer-songwriter Andrew Ashimba. The title of the song comes from the first line of the chorus:
“I read the news and the headlines say / Satellites just circled ‘round mars today.”
I wrote this lyric shortly after seeing a news article about a new satellite that was circling Mars. It was big news at the time, but I remember reading about it and feeling like something urgent was missing. We were celebrating an achievement in relation to a planet millions of miles away—which I agree is amazing—and yet on our own planet very basic needs weren’t being met and we were seriously struggling.
The first verse of the song goes on to explore this further:
“ . . . We call this progress /
Everyday we build more, but somehow we feel less /
New iPad released, but we can’t release stress /
New skyscraper, but the people in it are depressed.”
This is a thought many of us have had, and that some of us think about often. We’re out of balance and we’re aware of it. The image that comes to mind is of a person who has strengthened their upper body to the extreme—they constantly workout their arms, chest, etc.—and yet their legs get almost no attention. The lower body becomes incredibly weak, and eventually the imbalance goes so far that the legs can’t hold up the body. This person with incredible strength can’t even stand up and walk. There’s no foundation to support them.
We’re all familiar with this “upper body strength.” It’s all around us. We’re constantly making incredible technological and intellectual advancements. We can send cameras not only to circle other planets, but into our own bodies to take pictures of our organs. We’ve developed cars that can drive themselves. Every day we see headlines of our new achievements, but lifetimes go by and we still haven’t figured out how to make sure everyone has food—on a planet with more than enough food to go around. We haven’t figured out how to solve conflicts without violence. We can create everything imaginable—and unimaginable—but we’re desperately struggling to create safety, health, well-being.
A common response to this is that these interhuman issues are just much more complex. They involve things like greed, aggression, trauma, fear. We can’t just solve these things. They’ve been with us since the beginning. This is human nature. This is how we are.
But what if this response, this feeling that we can’t change these things, is actually not an inherent fact, but a product of social conditioning? What if we’ve learned a story that says these issues are too complex to approach, but it’s actually not the full truth? What if it’s actually a matter of what we prioritize, and like the top-heavy body builder, we’re simply not giving our attention to the full scope of our strengths?
As human beings we are capable of developing not only our intellects and technical skills, but also our capacity for courage, integrity, honesty, justice. Like muscles that we can strengthen, we also contain within us inner strengths capable of participating in, and enacting greater levels of well-being. We can build our ability to be good to each other and to live more harmoniously with our environment, like we can build the muscle to lift heavier things.
We are urgently in need of a shift towards a new paradigm that prioritizes this inner development. We need to invest in the development of compassion like we invest in the development of spacecrafts. These inner capacities aren’t fixed or static in their strength. We don’t just get a certain amount and that’s it. Like we grow other skills and strengths, we can also grow these capacities—in ourselves, and in turn collectively—and all kinds of resources, practices, and people exist that can help us do this. The question is, do we recognize the value of these capacities and prioritize them?
Another voice on the chorus of the “Mars Today” song is Tanzanian singer-songwriter Andrew Ashimba, singing in the Kinyamwezi language. Roughly translated into English, Ashimba is singing that we are in need of a new kind of education on our planet and that even the most highly educated folks with PhDs, etc., will have to go “back to school.” He’s suggesting that in order to adequately work with the problems we’re facing, we’ll have to develop more than just our technical skills and intellects. We have to educate and develop other parts of ourselves. We have to expand our capacities as human beings.
So what is this new “school”? Where do we find it and how do we enroll?
There are many different resources available to support this inner education, but in my own experience I’ve learned that the entry point isn’t something far off that I have to seek out. My day to day life is a doorway. My relationships, my experiences, my inspirations and struggles, all offer me the opportunity to further develop my inner strengths. How I choose to take this up is my choice.
For me the most challenging experiences of my life have been particularly powerful opportunities for this kind of learning. Over the past few years, this has become especially clear as I’ve found myself in situations that required me to grow my inner capacities in order to work with certain challenges in a helpful way. The situations I found myself in became a new kind of classroom.
My songwriting is often a reflection of these learning processes, and my most recent song release, “Fire Pond,” talks about one of these experiences. The lyrics tell a story about being in close relationship with people who hold points of view very different from my own, and about the process of trying to show up for these situations in a way that actually feels helpful—in a way that leads towards openness and understanding rather than further closing off and polarization. What I encountered in these relationships made it clear that my default responses didn’t actually serve what I really wanted. I had to further develop myself—had to grow my inner capacities—to be able to respond differently, and to hopefully create an outcome that didn’t deepen the divide.
Through a process of reflection, I had the opportunity to take up this inner education. I observed my own triggers and my default responses and began to recognize I could choose something different. When I was triggered I was angry. It was like my thoughts were on fire. And when I was able to step back from these thoughts, I began to experience moments where my heart would open and I could feel empathy. Where there had been anger, I could now experience openness, and in that openness, I could actually take interest in the experiences of the other person. In particular I could feel a connection to their suffering. I could feel that it was just as real as my own. And suddenly I was in a different place. They were human and I was human. We were both struggling, and I could turn towards the question, “What can I really do to help?” As long as I was gripped by my own anger and my desire to win an argument, this question wasn’t even accessible—it was out of reach.
This experience didn’t dissolve the inner challenges I was facing, but it helped me develop a practice that I can turn to, and it helped strengthen the part of me that can choose something more helpful than my own triggered responses. Like any intensive education or training, I made a lot of mistakes and it was difficult, but over time my capacities were strengthened.
We all experience this process of challenge and inner growth in different ways, but what we may not always experience, is how valuable it actually is. Do we see how important—how essential—our inner development is for the world around us, and for the kinds of changes our world needs? Do we value it as much as we value our intellectual and technical development?
I had a professor in college whose focus was on the life, work and philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi. The course I took with him was called “Nonviolence.” We explored the idea that in Gandhi’s understanding “nonviolence” isn’t just the absence of violence, but actually a force in and of itself. Putting this force into action, according to Gandhi, requires cultivating one’s inner life—developing the parts of us capable of this kind of strength. In this light, my college professor offered an optional (yet strongly recommended) lab focused on the inner development practices Gandhi and others have worked with; essentially a lab focused on particular exercises aimed at developing the capacities required to be an active participant in nonviolence.
These kinds of practices aren’t particular to Gandhi, or to a particular philosophy or religious tradition. They are universally human, and based in a very practical fact: The world we’ve created is a result of the decisions we make. The decisions we make can be no healthier than the faculties or capacities which make them—our thoughts, our feelings, our impulses. So the quality of our decisions and responses depends on how well we have developed our inner lives. We have to become healthier humans to make healthier decisions—to do healthier things. We have to evolve inwardly in order to truly help our outer world.
I’ve often reflected on the fact that scholars like my college professor—experts on how to enact nonviolence, for example—are never interviewed when the news is covering a conflict story. Of course there are deeply entrenched systemic and economic reasons for this, but there’s also something else at play: What do we consider to be “legitimate”? What do we consider “expert” or “professional”? We hear words like “analysis” or “strategy” with great trust in their legitimacy and their ability to bring about something helpful. Are we ready to also listen to words like “empathy” or “compassion” with equal weight, giving them the legitimacy they deserve, or will we continue to dismiss them as simplistic while our world suffers from an extreme lack of these capacities?
As we recognize the level of crisis we’re in and it’s time to take action, it’s essential that we keep in mind a basic understanding of what kind of knowledge is actually needed to achieve the changes we want to see. We should keep in mind that if we want space travel we need science; if we want great athletes we need physical training; and if we want more justice, equity, safety, and well-being we need human beings who have developed the inner abilities capable of building these realities. We need a collective world view that prioritizes and invests in inner development if we want human well-being to evolve anywhere near as effectively as our technologies.
In my experience, this kind of inner work is challenging and I’ve needed support to begin taking steps in my own life. I’ve needed friends interested in having these conversations, mentors, teachers, meaningful books, movies, music, art, exercises, practices. For each of us the kind of support we need is different. We find our way in different ways. Some people lift weights at home, some go to the gym. Some dance for exercise, others jog. My intention with writing this piece isn’t to outline a path or strategy for inner development, but simply to say that it is possible, and that it’s desperately needed.
Outer action is of course also a key piece of what’s needed. We have to face systemic problems and stand up to violence, corruption, injustice. In these situations I’m learning that my inner development is more critical than ever. The same things driving these systemic issues, also exist in me. Like my experience with friends with differing perspectives, I can recognize parts of me I need to let go, and other parts I need to strengthen in order to respond and act in ways that truly support sustainable solutions. My ability to be helpful actually depends on being able to speak and act increasingly free of my own fear, aggression and egoism. For me the biggest fight is to free myself from the hold these inner limitations have on me, so that little by little I’m inwardly strong enough to really ask the question, “How can I help?”
Cultivating this inner strength feels critical and like an incredible opportunity. I’m now able to recognize that there’s a part of me that’s willing to choose something different—even beyond my own fears and triggered responses. This part of me can be strengthened and developed over time, and it’s fundamentally invested in serving something bigger than myself. I can see it, and I’ve experienced its potential for growth. This is the strength-training I’m most interested in now. I’m interested in how we can support each other in this work, and how—as we each take steps in our own way—we can begin to see glimpses of a different way forward.
Love Bravely is a cross-genre music project and creative community founded by rapper / singer-songwriter, Matre, in collaboration with a wide network of musicians, artists and creatives. For more information visit us on Substack.
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