We Americans value our independence so much that we even dedicated a day in July to it.

Seriously, though, how independent are we, really? Are we - any of us, anywhere in the world - more independent or interdependent?

You know the answer. Independence is an illusion.

Relax. One advantage in taking stock of this is the realization that everything doesn't rest on your shoulders. Breathe a sigh of relief.

This said, how can we embrace this interdependent web of ours in a way that empowers us and makes the world a better place? You have questions, and as always, Dr. Teri has answers.

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[Photo credit: "Arthropoda (arthropods), by Unknown. Used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)]

Education: Self-Improvement
Religion & Spirituality
Business: Entrepreneurship

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The global crisis triggered by COVID-19 has forced a lot of rethinking, not least concerning so-called "Essential Workers."

What work can rightfully be considered essential, and by what standards?

More important, why is is that so many workers deemed essential in this moment of crisis - grocery store clerks, delivery truck drivers, farm laborers, and meat packers, to take a small sample - are those earning the lowest wages, many with no employer-provided health insurance, and far too many unable even to take sick days.

Will these unsung heroes get new recognition in a post-COVID world?

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[Photo Credit: "DIY Face Masks," by Achmad Chadran.]

Education: Self-Improvement
Religion & Spirituality
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The inaugural podcast, in which our hosts attempt to define the undefinable and brace listeners for what not to expect.

Welcome to Paradise Reclaimed. While we tried gamely to give form to this podcast-series lump of clay, shape is elusive when the scope of our musings is intentionally open-ended.

Who should listen? Folks who wonder about humanity and their role in it. People like Dr. Teri Baydar and me, who wrestle with the messy ideas that:

     (a) our creators put us here for a damned good reason, and
     (b) finding and living up to that reason is damned thorny, but worthy life pursuits.

Yup, life pursuits. As in all life long. It never ends. Nor do we want it to.

Clear as mud? That's kind of how life can be sometimes. But mud has its virtues

Production notes: We recorded this cast from our respective home studios via Zoom web conferencing at a time when our home state of Massachusetts was under Governor Charlie Baker's executive order to isolate and quarantine. (You're welcome, of course.) Oh, and also, you'll hear Dr. Teri refer to me as "Deeds," which is a lifelong nickname I had originally planned to use for this venture, before deciding to podcast as "Achmad," my legal name, instead. Long story. Maybe we'll get around to podcasting it.

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[Graphic credit: "Le Baiser, Magritte," by Ωméga. Used under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)]

Education: Self-Improvement
Religion & Spirituality
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Our hosts check in on urban raised-bed gardening to unearth some surprising facts and philosophies behind the practice, especially in light of our extraordinary #COVID19 time of isolation and quarantine. (Bonus: Dr. Teri shares tips for creating your own small-mammal farmshare.)

This novel coronavirus pandemic notwithstanding, Spring has sprung, and shoots and blooms are breaking soil's surface as they have for eons.

Spring's arrival alone should fill our hearts with hope.

It's the hope that feeds Dr. Teri's passion for gardening. You can't garden without hope. You need hope to appreciate how the seeds you sow so gingerly into your fingertip-formed trenches will germinate, grow, and bear the delicious fruit and vegetables you'll harvest and enjoy a month or more later.

"There's a certain vulnerability to planting seeds," explains Dr. Teri. "Digging up the soil, understanding the soil, adding some manure or whatever the soil needs to be optimum for whatever I'm putting in...thinking about what the dirt needs, instead of thinking about what I need, what I want."

For urban dwellers especially, gardening offers the ultimate feel-good diversion from the isolation blues.

Seeds of Diversity
What's going into the garden this year? Lots of heirloom seeds.

Dr. Teri sees heirloom seeds as a fulfillment of the Bodhisattva Vows. "An heirloom seed is something that's not been hybridized or manipulated or genetically modified. We left it alone. We let it do what it does. Instead of forcing it to be something else – for us – we are listening to it and saying, 'what kind of plant are you? What do you do? Why are you here?' Working on the assumption that everything's supposed to work together."

On the list this year:
●   orange beets
●   purple carrots
●   purple lettuce
●   bok choy
●   French dandelions
●   purple basil
●   Asian basil
●   Mizuna greens
●   stinging nettle

Wild Things at the Welcome Table
In keeping with her Buddhist values, Dr. Teri plans to share her bounty with others...including the community of small mammals with whom she shares her ecosystem!

"My neighbors were like, 'oh, that's a lot of work! The bunnies are gonna get it. They're gonna eat all your lettuce.' And I...don't care," says Dr. Teri with a shrug. In addition to rabbits, she welcomes local families of raccoons and skunks. As with most of us, when it came to food, Dr. Teri used to draw a line between humans and other species. But this changed after local wildlife got into her garbage cans repeatedly to feast on pungent  cheese rinds, and subsequently strewing trash across the neighborhood.  "I decided to stop doing that. I yielded to them, and started putting French cheese crusts out on the back patio on this metal tray."

She draws parallels between her small mammal smörgåsbord and the Hindu-Buddhist tradition of leaving offerings after feasts. "There are Buddhist rituals where we have a feast and the leftovers of the feast end up going out in the backyard, for the animals. Beyond that, in the name of ecosystem balance, if they want my cheese crust...I don't want my cheese crust. They've been here for generations before I ever was, before this house was here. Why would I put it in the garbage? It started to not compute anymore."

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The notion that power structures are pyramid-shaped by nature is as deeply ingrained as the fairy tales we're told in our youth and the corporate ladders we set out to climb as professionals. But is it time to explore alternative models?

Let's talk about pyramid schemes. No, not the notorious business ruses where paying recruits try to turn profits by exacting fees from rubes they bring on. We're talking instead about all the hierarchies – from sports teams to companies, orchestras, governments, faith communities, and even grassroots groups like neighborhood watch committees - that just seem naturally to take on that familiar pyramidal aspect: a commander at the top, flanked by a handful of lieutenants, and supported by a greater number of soldiers below.

There's an irresistible logic to this structure, of course. Yet it's useful to consider alternative structures, especially now, where the promise of benevolent leadership in our federal government has proven tenuous while the threat of authoritarian overreach grows daily.

In the wake of COVID-19, what we're discovering is that when people at the lower echelons of corporate entities suffer, the people at the top suffer too. If people at the bottom can't go to work due to quarantine, isolation, or sickness, the value that they create no longer accrues for those at the top.

Rethinking the Balance of Authority and Value
So what alternative structures are there? Dr. Teri talks about peer networks of "pods," or teams organized to provide a focused service or produce a specific component. The gig economy continues to evolve, certain implementations of which empower workers to manage their own time and resources, and even set their own rates.

You Don't Need to Throw Out the System to Reform It
Granted, some processes likely lend themselves to pyramidal organizations. Others, which may benefit from a different organizational approach, might need to change gradually.

Our role as self-actualized leaders is to constantly reflect on what we can do to improve these structures, these processes, and the products and services they deliver. What can we do to ensure that people across the organization are treated fairly, with dignity, and in a way that aligns with the true value they provide?

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[Photo credit: "Piramid," artist unknown. Used under Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication.]

Education: Self-Improvement
Religion & Spirituality
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It's grim. It's painful. It's jarring. But does COVID-19 necessarily mark a turn for the worse?

We need to acknowledge – to sit with, to grieve – the pain, hardship, and loss that the COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted on us. Of course we do, it would be disingenuous and irresponsible not to. Yet it would be equally disingenuous and irresponsible not to see in our pandemic crisis a once-in-a-generation opportunity to take stock in what we now now we can achieve as creative, resourceful human beings.

Yes, everything has changed, is changing, and will change. Largely because we've never needed to step up so profoundly and so urgently in recent history.

Learning How to Drive...Times Five

As Dr. Teri recounts, "I had a colleague say in a Zoom conversation...'this pandemic has pushed us forward in tech to do – right now, right here – what would have taken five to ten years to do. So now we just have to, and everybody's on this super-steep learning curve.'"

Remember how overwhelmed you were when you first learned to drive? How impossible it seemed to choreograph your work on the gas pedal, the steering wheel, the rearview mirrors, and the brake!

And then, one day, it all came together. The act of driving morphed over time from a hectic, front-of-the-brain, rapid-fire sequence of "if-then" problems to an intuitive, almost autonomic operation.

Amp that process up five-fold. This pandemic has us rethinking our family relationships, learning new ways to do work, picking up new skill sets...and discovering along the way that we've been taking the wrong approach. Ignoring flaws we needn't have ignored. Overlooking opportunities that were there all along.

You've got this. We've all got this.

Which is good, because it's time for us to pivot. The ground has shifted and the rules have changed.

Let's find a new way to drive.

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[Graphic credit: "Liaison pivot avec frottement: résistance au pivotement," by CDang. Used under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)]

Education: Self-Improvement
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Working from home, supporting distance-learning children, checking in on friends and family who need some extra support, and just making time to sweep up those unsightly dustballs just under the front of the sofa...our COVID-19 moment has driven our multitasking to frenzied heights.

We've all been warned, haven't we? The human brain was primordially wired to do one thing at a time. When we try to push beyond that, we suffer. The work is not our best. Worse, we put our health at risk.

Dr. Teri has a term for it: running on minimum.

"Constantly being on an almost-empty tank," to hear her define it. "Not having a full tank to be comfortable, to be able to go deep on something, to be able to get traction. We're jumping from Zoom room to Zoom room, texting...."

Not that she's immune to it. "My calendar invites, with the Zooms and the Skypes, and the this and the that...it's kind of crazy." [3:20]

But running on minimum encompasses more than mere multitasking. It's a mindset that seduces us into believing that we can accomplish more by touching lightly on one task or topic and then pivoting quickly to the next. That by doing so, we can actually preserve our energy, as if each job we're called to tackle is merely one frame in a feature-length movie, one stride in a marathon.

"You're constantly in an exhale mode," says Dr. Teri. "That's not sustainable. I believe that being in that state can cause you to fall ill, physically."

The path to true productivity and sustainable health? Lose the shallow-and-broad mindset, and replace it with focused-and-deep.

This holds whether the work at hand is creating a PowerPoint presentation for the board, sewing face masks for essential workers, or helping your daughter prove the Exterior Angle Theorem.

What awaits you along your focused-and-deep journey? The Flow State.

Listen to Episode 7: The Hazards of Running on Minimum, then tell us about your personal Flow State.

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[Graphic credit: "The little blue wheel keeps following me," by Axel. Used under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)]

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The United States (and, by extension, the world) is today confronting a tenacious legacy of abhorrent racism.

A spate of recent atrocities committed against African-Americans – including George Floyd, whose neck was pinned under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer as three others looked on; Breonna Taylor, shot eight times by Louisville police officers in a misdirected drug raid; Ahmaud Arbery, shot while jogging by two white men near Brunswick, Georgia; and Eric Garner, killed in a police chokehold on New York's Staten Island – spurred protest rallies and marches in cities and towns across all 50 states, as well as in England, Ireland, The Netherlands, Germany, and South Africa.

Officially, at least, the U.S. Civil War ended in 1865. Jim Crow-era racial segregation was supposed to have ended with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Yet here we are in 2020, still struggling – mostly peacefully, but at times violently – with toxic, institutionalized racism. Racism that blights our democracy, poisons our schools, corrupts business, and undermines our growth and advancement as humans.

Dr. Teri points out that this racist tendency is just one part of a deeper human flaw called Otherism. Otherism is the process virtually all of us employ to feel better about ourselves by zeroing in on differences we perceive in others.

"We have this systemic shaping in the way we oppress," Dr. Teri explains. "It's systematic objectification."

But while systematic, otherism can be imperceptible, insidious, in many contexts and situations. It can show up in hiring and firing decisions, in feedback offered by teachers to individual students, and even in the decisions we make as consumers.

"When you have a group that considers itself exclusive, they systematically have to find somebody to exclude," she continues. "If you can't run somebody out of town once in a while, how do you know who you are?"

Where can we start to overcome our othering tendencies? For starters, we can try to see the world through a different lens.

"Think about it. Have courageous conversations. Look at it as a humanity issue. Have some accountability for what happens in your heart and mind in full honesty," prescribes Dr. Teri, "and what you're willing to do in your immediate environment to make it better."

Is otherism holding you back?

Reflect. Decide. Make the change.

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[Graphic credit: "BoogeyMan," by Anne Worner. Used under Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.

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