Hi guys, sorry I’ve been a bit quiet of late, I just haven’t felt like writing lately, but all is well and I’ve had a pretty good couple of weeks. Anyway, I just wanted to add a few more thoughts (from others) on normality, following from my post ‘There’s nothing good about normal!‘ a few weeks back.

First of all, Carissa just added a new comment and seeing as though most people don’t often go back and read comments from old threads I thought it deserved greater prominence. She wrote:

“Was re-reading this entry and I thought of some additional things that are now seen as “normal” in our society but which aren’t.

It’s now normal to root for people to fail and fall on their butts, and to see people as competition, versus cheering for people to succeed and being happy for them.  There are several reasons for this I think - so many people’s lives are unhappy and unfulfilling (which in itself is a point that I’ll get back to) that they can’t stand to see people achieving something good and being happy when they aren’t.  They want to tear them down to their own level.  So watching somebody fail or screw up or fall on their butt (figuratively speaking) becomes fun in an evil gleeful way.  (hence, the *tabloid culture,* which specializes in that.  Tear people down for the paparazzi pics capturing them with celulite on their thighs, no makeup, wrinkles, or an outfit that’s not deemed “haute couture” enough.  Look on in giddy glee when their relationships fall apart, look for the drugs, sex and cheating scandals after they’ve died so even in death they can be raked over the coals.)  This is now considered normal.  Which leads to how celeb-obsessed entertainment is now considered normal.  Following the minutae of celebs’ lives because people’s own lives are boring and pointless.

The jealousy/competition thing is an extreme manifestation of separation.  Instead of viewing ourselves as related pieces of a greater whole, they mistakenly think we’re all cut off from each other and completely separate…and thus, competition to be jealous of.   So it’s now considered normal to be separate, competitive, jealous, gossipy and mean spirited.  Not everybody is like that, but in certain regions (urban centers in particular) that attitude is prevailant.   We have movies and TV shows that celebrate this attitude, with backbiting and cat fights and scheming and plotting and jealousies galore, trying to tell people, “This is how you should be.  This is the new normal.  Strive for this.  Emulate this.”

And as just mentioned, it’s now considered normal to have an unfulfilling, mundane and possibly unhappy life.  You mentioned how it’s considered normal to hang with one’s friends being superficial and mundane (I definitely agree!) and this extends to one’s entire life in general.  I look around at people and I can’t believe the lives and jobs that most people have locked themselves into!  o_0   Like, who would WANT to do that……for years on end?!?!?!  Is that what they imagined for themselves as a kid??!  Who grows up saying “I want to be an accounting clerk who’s always irritated and frustrated obsessing over getting the numbers to balance!”  Nobody.  Or, “I want to be a stressed out executive assistant to a boss I don’t like, being run ragged every day!”  Nobody.  Or, “I want to become a corporate guy working for donor relations and attend endless mindless meetings where it’s all about ‘How can I get more money for the university?’ !”  Nobody.   Jobs with no life to them, no variety, no real point, *working for that which is illusory,* so that one can insure that they can keep paying the bills every month.  To me it’s a life not worth having.  Work should ideally be about producing something tangible……….not working for illusory concepts.  (I once wrote in one of my articles: “Banks, loans, credit cards, debt counseling and consolidation, taxes, personal investment, mortgages, car/home/boat/personal insurance, law firms, home owners associations — what I’ve found is that the number of useless, illusory industries is skyrocketing, while jobs that create an actual tangible product and serve a useful purpose are on the decline. [...] What good is it going to do anybody to be a financial investor, lawyer, paralegal, mortgage underwriter, IRS agent, insurance salesperson, credit card telemarketer or property manager enforcing rules for the Association about mowing your lawn and power washing your driveway when/if things finally really hit the fan? These people will kind of be up the creek, to put it lightly. Their jobs and industries are completely useless in every sense of the word. So since illusion is what now dominates your job market choices, it’s all the more reason to find a way out, ASAP.”

Illusory concepts is now considered the norm, instead of making or doing something tangible and meaningful.

I work with people who’ve been doing the same lifeless, pointless job for 20, 25, 30 years.  I can’t even IMAGINE.  The worse part is when I encounter coworkers who hate their jobs and complain and gripe and moan and groan….and then what happens when I nonchalantly suggest to them that they quit.  Their faces get a wide eyed, surprised look, like, “huh?!”   You can see them running into a wall with the idea.  It never occurrred to them to leave.  They think I’m weird for suggesting such a thing.  You don’t…..quit your job!  They think it’s normal that you hate your job and complain and be miserable for years and years on end!

I can think of many more so-called normal ways of being in the modern western world that are anything but normal, but I’ll stop here!  :D  ’Cause
I could go on all day, seriously…..”

Great stuff Carissa, I agree entirely!

Also, about a week after I made the original post, I discovered Paulo Coelho also looked at the subject of normality on his blog. Given that I’m connected with him through Facebook and that he might have seen my blog post in his newsfeed I wondered if he was influenced by my post, but then I noticed he posted it in January so he was first.

You can see Paulo’s blog post here: Inventory of normality

Machu Picchu, surely one of the most amazing sights to behold on this incredible planet we live on, is probably the main reason why many hundreds of thousands of people feel drawn to visit Peru each year. The first time I remember seeing pictures of Machu Picchu I was about 22 years old and immediately I thought - I have to go there! and less than 6 months later I was there  - and awestruck. I’ve waited a long time to go back!

I will write more about Machu Picchu in my next post, but this post is about how I got there. The first time I visited Peru we travelled to Machu Picchu by train. This time I wanted to walk there!

There are a few treks in this region that enable you to finish at Machu Picchu. The most well known is the Inca Trail, a stone pathway built by the Incas to connect Cusco (their capital) with Machu Picchu. However, at this time of year you need to book over 3 months in advance if you want to hike the Inca Trail due to laws enacted several years ago to help preserve the trail, which allow only 200 people a day to begin the trek - and only with a licensed tour company.

The second most popular trek to Machu Picchu is known as the Salkantay Trek. This is because it passes right by the regions second highest mountain - Mount Salkantay. You’re free to hike this trek alone if you want to, but as I’m not an experienced hiker (and always looking for ways to meet more people) I decided it would be better to do an organised trek with one of the trekking companies that operate in Cusco.

The Salkantay trek would be a 4 day trek arriving at Aguas Calientes (the village below Machu Picchu) at the end of the 4th day. The 5th day would be spent exploring Machu Picchu and then finally getting the train back to Cusco.

Each of the 4 trekking days would be split into 2 hiking sections of about 4 hours each (with lunch in the middle). The first 3 nights we would be camping in tents and the 4th and final night would be spent at a hotel in Aguas Calientes.

Day 1 - Mollepata to Soraypampa

The first day of the trek began at 4.30am when everyone was picked up at their hotels, or residencies, by a taxi driver. We were then driven to a waiting bus that took us on a 3 hour drive out of Cusco to the town of Mollepata where the trek would begin around 9.30am.

Mollepata is 2,900masl (metres above sealevel) and is a small village only accessible from an incredibly long and winding dirt track that seemed to go on forever. After arriving in Mollepata we were taken to a local cafe for breakfast which was the first real chance to meet the rest of the group and our guides. The impressive group consisted of 14 people (5 Brits, 2 Americans, 2 Australians, 2 Germans, 2 Polish and a Belgian). There were also 2 tour guides to lead the way, 1 cook to keep us well fed, and 3 horsemen to ensure the horses ended up in the same place as we did (the camping equipment and some of our bags would be carried by horses).

The trek began after breakfast around 9.30am after we’d all introduced ourselves and taken a few group photos. The first morning was mostly uphill but not usually on a steep incline so it wasn’t too difficult. But still, after 3 or 4 hours trekking you become rather tired and hungry and incredibly grateful for a hearty lunch. All our meals were excellent I’m thankful to say. Both lunch and dinner usually consisted of a soup for starter and then a main course and a hot drink. Rice and/or potatoes were a common feature of the main course along with beef or chicken in the form of traditional Peruvian cuisine such as Lomo Saltado.

According to my infosheet we hiked 19km on the first day in about 8 hours. Our destination was the campsite at Soraypampa, at 3900masl, so we went about 1km uphill in total. Soraypampa, which is just a campsite (there’s no village or anybody living there), would be our highest campsite of the trip and also by far the coldest. I think we arrived there about 6pm and it was already starting to get really cool. Once the sun sets in this region of Peru, it can get very cold.

Most people were in bed by around 9pm as it was just too cold to be anywhere else but your sleeping bag! And thankfully I had a warm sleeping bag, you needed one, because night time temperatures in this area would drop below freezing. Some guy whose watch could read the temperature said it was about -5 Celsius inside the tents! A few people experienced an uncomfortably cold night because not everyone had great sleeping bags. You were expected to bring your own unless the booking agency provided you with one (which was the case for me). Not all sleeping bags are designed to be used in sub-zero temperatures!

Day 2 - Soraypampa to Chaullay

Day 2 was by far the most difficult day of the entire trek with about 10 hours of hiking in total. We were woken about 5.30am for a 6am breakfast and I think a 6.30am start. The first 4 hours of day 2 would be spent hiking entirely uphill and it was pretty steep in places and quite gruelling. After about 4 hours of hiking uphill we would finally reach the highest point of the trek at 4650m, right in front of Mount Salkantay. Mount Salkantay is probably one of the most impressive peaks I’ve ever been close to and I’m sure it would be a challenge to any mountaineer planning on reaching its peak.

After 4 hours of hiking uphill we were all pretty hungry; however, we wouldn’t be having lunch here unfortunately, that was another 2 hours away. But thankfully after the highest point it was pretty much all downhill the rest of the way.

Not long after a much needed lunch we then entered into a long and very lush valley where we would hike for about another 3 hours in a downward direction. It was amazing how quickly the landscape changed. Some of these valleys appear to have their own micro-climates and get a lot more rain than other much drier regions at a similar altitude. In about a 10 minute period of walking we dropped down from a fairly dry and barren landscape to being surround by incredibly lush and beautiful vegetation.

The second campsite was a place called Chaullay which is 2900masl, so we dropped down about 1750m in the space of an afternoon. This campsite was on a small isolated farm so there were a few people living there but I think it’s about half a days walk from here to the nearest road so they’re pretty cut off from the outside world, although that’s definitely not unusual in Peru.

I think we hiked 21km on day 2 and even though the campsite was a lot warmer most people still had a very early night!

Day 3 -Chaullay to Santa Teresa

Day 3 was certainly the easiest day of the trek, although it’s fair to say we cheated a bit because after about a 3 or 4 hours morning hike through another beautiful, green valley, we then met up with a bus that took us to our third and final campsite at a small town called Santa Teresa. The reason they took us part of the way by bus was so that we would have time to experience the amazing hot springs at Santa Teresa, and I think everyone was glad for this. The hot springs were incredibly beautiful and a very welcome relief for 14 tired and sore bodies!

Day 4 - Santa Teresa to Aguas Calientes

The morning of Day 4 would be spent walking to the Santa Teresa train station (about a 3 hour walk) where for those who who were feeling worse for wear could travel the final part of the trek to Aguas Caliente by train - except that wasn’t an option today. Over the last few months there’s been a series of transport strikes in Peru and today was such a day, so the trains weren’t running. I think everyone would have walked anyway, except their was a slight problem. Usually all our bags would be put on the train (we said goodbye to the horses when we got on the bus in the middle of day 3) and then everyone would walk up the tracks. But with no trains running everyone had to carry their own bags for this last part of the hike (I’m sure the horses would find that funny but we certainly didn’t).

After 3 long hours of walking with a much heavier loads than we were used to, we finally made it to our final destination of Aguas Calientes where we checked in to a rather nice hotel for our 4th and final night. Our 4th morning would be an early start of around 4.30am to get to the bus stop for 5am to get the first bus up the mountain to Machu Picchu (write up coming in my next post).

For the full slideshow of this trek go here

I just want to say thanks to all my friends who left some really positive comments below my last couple of posts while I was away, I really appreciate the support and it’s always good to know who your real friends are! Anyway, I’m back from my trek to Machu Picchu and I’m feeling really awesome and happy again. It was a magnificent trek with awe-inspiring views literally every step of the way, I’m so glad I did it. I’ll be writing a report about it along with photos in the next few days.

In response to Asif’s comment, my friend wasn’t getting free accomodation with me, she was staying in a nearby hostel, however I just found out today that she left without paying or even leaving her room key behind. Anyway, I owe her some money for the deposit she paid towards the trek, so I’ll give that to the hostel. It’s roughly the same amount she owed them I think.

So there’s been another unexpected development with my friend. I’m a little sad to say that she took an early flight home without allowing me any chance to work things out with her. It’s a huge shame, but I guess I have to respect her decision.

Although I screwed up a little, I’ve been completely honest about why, and I can’t do much more than that. But it seems that honesty is not what she wanted and I’ve received an email from her saying how happy she is to be back home with ‘normal people’, that I have my head stuck up my anus and that I’m living in a drug induced fantasy (a reference to the fact I occasionally work with plant teachers like Ayahuasca). Ouch!

Anyway, surprisingly, I’m totally fine about it all, in fact I’ve actually been feeling really good today, however it’s left me feeling like I want to have a bit of a rant about what’s generally considered normal in society. None of this is aimed at anyone in particular.

Now obviously what’s considered ‘normal’ is quite subjective and of course it will vary from country to country and culture to culture. However, I want to aim my sights squarely at western society, particularly in the UK and the US.

The sad fact of the matter is that our society has gotten really sick - and for most people, that’s completely normal. Our culture has become like a cancer to this planet. It’s rampant with greed, lies, corruption and injustice; and almost nobody wants to hear the truth about all that - and that’s considered normal.

Here are many other things that most people in western society consider to be ‘normal’.

It’s considered normal to lie or talk crap about people all the time. It’s considered normal to be superficial and mundane, to meet with your friends and talk about the same old nonsense time after time. Gossip about friends and family, gossip about your colleagues and work, gossip about celebrities and media bullshit, and sport. And let’s not forget about Big Brother or the latest soap opera storylines. It’s considered normal to spend your evenings watching trashy tv programs, reading trashy novels or watching trashy movies that feature a never-ending stream of degrading sex, violence and conflict.

Conflict is all around us, not just in the media, but in our relationships with friends, family, colleagues and even strangers - and it’s all considered quite normal. It’s considered normal to argue, put down, or fall out with people instead of trying to understand them and resolve differences and make peace.

Selfishness is normal too. It’s considered normal to go after whatever you want no matter that others might get hurt. It’s considered normal to be a nothing more than a consumer and spend insane amounts of money buying stupid shit you don’t need and probably will never use. It seems that the most popular type of therapy these days is ‘retail therapy’. Isn’t it considered normal to go out and splash your cash because you’re feeling down about yourself?

It’s considered normal to spend most of your life doing a crap job you really hate because you need to pay your mortgage and all that other debt you’ve acquired. Sadly it’s now perfectly normal to be up to your eyeballs in debt from bankloans and creditcards and storecards (and all because you can’t help buying useless crap to make yourself feel better).

It’s considered normal for both teenagers and adults to go out at the weekend with the sole intention of getting blitzed out of their minds on alcohol and/or drugs so they can’t even remember what they did.

It’s considered normal that the rich keep on getting richer while the poor get poorer and nothing much is ever done about that. It’s considered normal that a very small number of people control the vast majority of the worlds wealth. It’s considered normal that in many countries millions of people lack even the most basic human needs such as food, shelter and water, and that each and everyday thousands of children are starving to death. But let’s just leave it to Bono to sort that out shall we?

Tragically, war is also considered a normal part of our lives on this planet (just so long as it’s at the other side of the world, mind you). It’s considered normal that our governments are regularly committing genocide in far off places, and that the lives of many thousands of men, women and children are being snuffed out in increasingly more disturbing ways - just so that we can all maintain our ‘normal’ lifestyles.

It’s now considered normal that our governments are hell-bent on removing what few liberties and freedoms we have left. That they’re putting us under increasingly more surveillance - all in the name of our safety and protection of course! If you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got nothing to worry about, isn’t that right?

It’s considered normal that corporations all around the world are destroying the planet all in the name of profit. Rainforests are being destroyed, rivers and oceans are being polluted, toxic waste is being spilled, millions of species are going extinct, indigenous peoples are being displaced from their lands where they’ve lived for thousands of years - all because corporations are legally obliged to keep making fat profits for their shareholders, no matter what the consequences - and it’s all considered normal by our society.

Now I’m not saying that the majority of people love war and violence and all the other terrible things that happen in our society and around the world. Most people seem nice, and they will usually say they dislike those terrible things and wish they didn’t exist. But all these things are generally accepted, and it’s that acceptance that allows these things to keep happening.

It’s not people like me that are living in a drug induced fantasy world, it’s most of society. Since the moment we are born we’re conditioned to accept the status-quo, conditioned to believe that this is just the way things are. A combination of media (books, films, television etc), education, religion and the people all around us are constantly reinforcing what’s supposed to be ‘normal’. It’s essentially brainwashing, but the brainwashing is so subtle that most are never aware of it, and so complete that most will never escape it.

Anyway, enough of the normal stuff, let’s take a moment to consider what’s generally not considered normal in society. The kinds of people who are not considered normal are:

Anyone who rocks the boat or asks too many questions
Anyone who tries to point out all the lies and the bullshit and the corruption at every level of our society
Anyone who wakes up and realises that our governments and media are lying to us about just about everything (and they really are lying about almost everything!)
Anyone who sees a major conspiracy in the way our society is controlled
Anyone who seeks to know the truth about our reality, about God, about the universe
Anyone who tries to expand their consciousness
Anyone who loves and wants to live closer to nature
Anyone who talks to the trees and the plants and the flowers (and particularly those who get a response!)
Anyone who decides to downshift and simplify their lives and stop buying useless crap they don’t need
Anyone who doesn’t have a television in their house
Anyone who knows there’s a lot more to this world than all the things we can experience with our five senses.
Anyone who talks about unconditional love and acceptance and strives for those ideals (even though they may not get it right all the time)
Anyone who claims to see or communicate with the spirit world, or anyone who even believes the spirit world exists!
Anyone who claims (quite rightly) that civilisation is rapidly heading towards a major calamity that it may never recover from.

Isn’t it strange how the people who are trying to create a better world are rarely considered normal?

I’m ecstatically happy to admit that I’m not not considered normal by most of society. I feel so relieved that I managed to wake up and see through most of the nonsense and the bullshit, and that I feel like I’ve left it all behind. Right now I couldn’t think of anything worse than to be called ‘normal’. I might even consider it an insult!

I long for the day when truth is considered normal and lies are rejected, a time when conflict is a thing of the past and everyone is working together to create a better world and live in total harmony with one other. A time when all of humanity is united and not divided. Although it’s hard to believe sometimes, that time is coming, I’m sure….

PS. This post is a little rough around the edges, but I wanted to post it before I start my trek to Machu Picchu tomorrow. I have to be up in less than 5 hours and it’s definitely time for bed. I’ll be offline for the next 5 days.

(Thanks again to Sue for passing this on)

The Unforgettable Commencement Address by Paul Hawken to the Class of 2009, University of Portland, May 3, 2009

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a

simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate,

lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there.

But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are

going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth

at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of

decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not

one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute

that statement. Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you

are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to

have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water,

soil, or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch

the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that

spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue

that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per

hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really

good food, but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will

receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can

tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING.

The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school.

It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and

that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And

here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not

possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know

what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it

was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my

answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is

happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data.

But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and

the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a

pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing

to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore

some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet

Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot

with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary

power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description.

Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action

is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses,

companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups

and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day:

climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger,

conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the

world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather

than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like

Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large

as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides

hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its

clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers,

children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns,

artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students,

incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets,

doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the

President of the United States of America, and as the writer David

James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such

a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and

the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is

true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall

us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform,

rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept

shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving

away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the

living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the

evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of

strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific

eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to

create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those

they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance

except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely

unknown Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood and their

goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four

people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human

beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted

with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists

as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They

were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty.

But for the first time in history a group of people organized

themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would

never receive direct or indirect benefit.. And today tens of millions

of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits,

civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental

organizations, of companies who place social and environmental justice

at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this

effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What

do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life

creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no

better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of

abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned

people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed

regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the

only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We

have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in

real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money

to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present

we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross

domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on

healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the

future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the

other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people

and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich,

it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago,

and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally

you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by

Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our

fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is

to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90

percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and

without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each

human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes

between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human

body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one

with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has

undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the

universe exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science

would discover that each living creature was a “little universe formed

of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute

and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body?

Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on

simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore

it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who

is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully

not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are

conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want

you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate

wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came

out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of

course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be

ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the

stars come out every night, and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and

the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened,

not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as

complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done

great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring

creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging,

stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations

before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted

and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your

existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for

a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic,

not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn’t make

sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your

life depends on it.

Paul Hawken is a renowned entrepreneur, visionary environmental
activist, and author of many books, most recently Blessed Unrest: How
the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw
It Coming. He was presented with an honorary doctorate of humane
letters by University president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., in May,
when he delivered this superb speech. Our thanks especially to Erica
Linson for her help making that moment possible.

www.paulhawken.com