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One of the exercises in CLP is about identifying and clarifying our personal values. We each identify our top five values, writing one each on five index cards. Then we have to drop one, and another… until we are left holding the card with our number one, top value. What is your current One right now and why?
My other four values might look different now, but at the time of CLP, my number one value was freedom — and I think that’s still true now.
To clarify what I mean by freedom — because I think it has such a politically charged meaning in this country — for me it doesn’t mean freedom to do whatever we want, especially at the cost of harming others, for example. I think there are ways that we have to negotiate my freedom versus your freedom, and think about what best establishes our collective freedom.
But really, I want to speak to liberating ourselves from expectations or burdens that bring us down, that constrain us, that limit our imaginations of what could be possible for ourselves, our neighborhoods, our communities, and our society at-large.
In my personal life, I deal with some degree of family expectation. I’m an only son, an only child, and the only male in my generation. In my traditional Chinese family, this means I bear the responsibility of continuing our family traditions, values. I’m a key decision-maker, and a steward of our culture and history.
So this expectation is something I grew up with, and people in my family reminded me often of it. I don’t think it ever came from a bad place; they were just encouraging me. It’s two sides of the same coin — people want the best for you, but maybe that also requires the most from you.
But that’s just my personal, cultural piece. There are so many ways in which certain expectations, identities, stereotypes are assigned to us by others.
I want freedom from all of that. To show up as our authentic, true selves, and not feel like we have to limit who we are. Either by whatever’s in our own psyche or what others want to judge us by.
But I also think about freedom in a political sense. Who has historically and systemically been denied certain freedoms that others are allowed to enjoy?
One of my other values that I had to toss for this exercise was justice. In some ways, I feel like I cheated a little bit with the exercise because I said that my interpretation of freedom subsumes justice. Because of this point I’m making — whose freedom do we value more, why is that the case, and how do we repair the damage that has been done when we value certain people’s freedoms more, and how do we redistribute freedoms in a more equitable manner.
That’s how I think about it in a larger sense, beyond the ‘how do I just show up as my true, authentic self.’ There’s definitely a political element to how I think about freedom.
I’m curious about the relationship of freedom to liberation, for you?
Yeah, it’s a good question.
If I were to get a little technical, liberation is both a process and an outcome; whereas freedom is the thing that we’re talking about exercising.
With liberation, it’s this broader process of allowing myself to have more freedom, or achieve this state of being as free as I possibly can be. Again, with the big caveat of not doing harm with the freedom that I have, not limiting other’s freedom. I acknowledge that there are so many ways in which we all have to constrain our freedoms, to allow for the most freedom that we can collectively have as society. That is a balancing act.
It brings nature to mind for me; the tree allows for the bird, and the sun, and the wind, when we’re talking about positive, pro-social freedoms.
Yeah, and I think that example is really important, when you start talking about non-human, living entities. Our freedom to roam or explore nature encroaches upon the freedoms of other living species. We need to incorporate stewardship and conservation as additional responsibilities. If we don’t take care of land, then how do we ever have the freedom to be able to interact with Nature? We end up squandering what the Earth has given us.
It makes me think of the freedom to be healthy, and the ways that a free or liberated state means health in the grander sense, including balance of ecosystems.
Totally. There are so many dimensions to it. When I think about nature, I immediately jump to the climate crisis. And then I think about freedom in a temporal sense. We don’t have the freedom to do whatever we want now, because we not only have to think about the futures of who’s currently living (especially youth), but the futures of who’s to come. We are accounting for people’s freedoms that don’t even exist yet.
What is one big, burning leadership question you are wrestling with these days?
I’m in graduate school right now, for urban planning. It’s a two-year program. Honestly, I come to this field with little-to-no experience in policy and planning. What I’m really hoping to get out of this is to understand community self-determination: what tools do neighborhoods have available to them to be able to preserve, and even grow and flourish?
Something that I had settled on in my mind as a great way of sharing wealth and power, was worker-owned co-ops or cooperative organizations in general. It’s a great, bold, amazing theory in my mind: democratizing these processes where everybody has a stake in the organization, where everybody can participate.
But we’re so used to hierarchical organizations. It can be very difficult to shift our mindsets away from the top-down model. I listen to what my boss tells me to do. Or, my boss and I have a conversation at least, I push back a little, but ultimately the decision is with them.
I want us to get to a place where we have a more horizontal organization; how do we make decisions together?
From what I understand in reading about many organizations that employ these models, it does probably extend the decision-making process in terms of how long it takes. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. This is the reality of what a participatory process looks like.
I think you really have to empower people to want to participate, and trust that process. And that is the leadership question that I’m thinking about. If you’re somebody who’s transitioning an organization, or trying to start an organization that is more cooperatively minded, that is trying to give mostly-equal power to its workers or participants or members, then how do you get people excited to be a part of that process? To feel like they can contribute, and that they’re valued, and that they ultimately trust that if they say something critical, they won’t be punished for it?
I’m thinking of B-corps like Patagonia– that even in Benefit Corporations and non-profit organizations, it’s still the same model with a different goal.
Yes, totally. How many nonprofits operate with an executive director role? It doesn’t seem like we’re really changing the script in the mainstream, but if you look beyond that, I think people are developing really exciting, interesting alternatives to that way of governance or decision-making. But it’s hard, it’s really hard.
I’m trying to understand how I might be able to be a part of the process of empowering others. You asked me what is a ‘burning leadership question,’ and I don’t know if I identify as ‘leader’ in that sense. But, I guess we’re also all leaders in our own ways, in the same way we’re all teachers, we’re all learners.
What inspires you, gives you hope these days?
Community-led change. I realize that “community” is this really amorphous, tricky term. To me, it presumes some sense of belonging, or utopianism to it. And it’s always like, who do I mean when I say “the community?”
People come together around a particular cause or many causes. They organize, they protest, they demonstrate, and they make their voice heard, whether on the streets or through their representatives locally, regionally, or nationally. This process is oftentimes met with resistance and conflict. But people don’t give up. They continue to band together and fight for what they believe in.
To me, what’s amazing and what gives me hope about that, is that people can still come together, particularly when these movements are broad-based, when they bring together people of many different backgrounds, whether cultural, lingual, racial, class-based, and/or gender-based.
So where I find hope is not necessarily in whatever outcome resulted; it’s in people believing that they have power and persisting in their fight. Where I find hope is that people still have that power. That they can continue to do that. It’s incredibly difficult, but people still do, and people persist. That’s where I really look for inspiration.
Amen. I’ve been thinking about Dr. King’s moral arc of the universe, longer than we want it to be but still bending over time.
I recently went to a community land trust in Roxbury, which is a neighborhood in Boston. The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative was founded in the 1980s after residents of color fought for a community development process where they would have a voice — to protect, develop and grow their neighborhood in ways they wanted to. That there would be affordable housing available to them, and that they could become homeowners.
They brought together people of so many different backgrounds to do this work, and it kickstarted this process of having a community land trust that still operates in that area. It’s one of the few land trusts that actually has eminent domain over its area, and that continues to serve an important community purpose.
That’s such an inspiring example. And it leads us to this big question of how you stay healthy in the work. This work of transformational change is hard. Stepping in, stepping up, over time, can be draining – physically, intellectually, emotionally, psychically, spiritually. How do you recharge, restore, take care of yourself, rekindle your fire?
Well, there’s the easy list of habits that I could put together — exercise, eat well, sleep well, go to therapy. But that feels very task-driven, instead of a mindset shift.
I think I’m most restored when I allow myself periods of intentional rest. That means I’m unplugging purposefully, and I affirm that this is time for me. It doesn’t matter what activity I end up doing then, whether that’s cooking something special for myself or friends, or if I’m going to take a long, long nap.
I need to take care of myself, love myself. That means setting aside intentional time for whatever it is that I want to do.
This is my third week of school. It’s been a few years since I’ve been in any sort of school environment. I’m already deep into homework, workshops, classes, and yet over the weekend, my partner invited me to this gathering for POC in the environment in Massachusetts.
We went fishing, simple catch and release. Fishing is not something that I have much experience with. But I wanted to do it — it would get me outside, hopefully with some cool people, and it’s restful. We were chatting here and there, but there were times of quiet too, where we’d go off on our own and cast our lines out, seeing if we could catch any fish.
I was just thinking about being present in myself, being out there and allowing myself this guilt-free space to unplug and rest for a little bit. My partner said to me at one point, “I saw you just smiling to yourself.” I’m really glad I did that for myself, because I was able to come back to the rest of the weekend. I won’t say that I finished everything, but I at least approached some of my work in a better mental state!
I flip between being an extrovert and an introvert. But I need people in my life, and I really want to spend more time with people in intentional community. Friends and some family really restore me. Even getting to know new people can really inspire me!
Before I moved to Boston, I lived by myself in Lancaster, Pennsylvania during peak COVID. I was working from home, and it was super-solitary in some ways. I learned to love myself better, but I missed people.
I totally hear that. And speaking of people, would you introduce us to someone you are/were close with personally (e.g., family, teacher, friend, mentor), who shaped (or shapes) you and how you view leadership and possibility for a better community/world?
My mom. She comes to mind most and first, because yesterday was the five-year anniversary of her passing. I’ve been thinking a lot about her this week.
Something she always wanted for me was for me to go to graduate school. I’m living out this part of her dream for me right now, and she’s not here to see it. So I’m thinking a lot about that, and what it looks like to make these next two years the best for me in terms of my studies and my growth. But I’m also thinking about her, and about what she would have wanted.
Actually, I think that’s all she would have wanted. For me to grow and be excited about learning in graduate school.
I think about what kind of person I want to show up as, because of her. She was somebody who loved so, so deeply. When she liked somebody, she could give them the world. Dropping off food, giving keys to our house if you want to just come and hang out, finding internship opportunities for your kids… Whatever it might be, she was there to help in whatever way she could.
This was despite the fact that for much of her adult life, she battled lupus and was very, very sick.
Life dealt my mom such a difficult hand, but she still found ways to help neighbors, friends, and especially me. Every day when I came home from school, she had some snack ready for me. She and I spent a lot of time together in my last year of high school, because she was my only parent in the U.S. My dad was working in China, so I got to see him less.
My mom was a scientist. She worked in a lab at the University of California, San Diego, and she also worked as a technician in biotech. She really liked to devote a lot of time to her work — perhaps too much in the beginning. But then with lupus, she went on short-term, then long-term disability.
She would tell me things like, “I’m not sure what I’ve really contributed to the world because my career was cut short, but I leave the world with you, and I know that that’s enough, because you’re you.” That type of praise and affirmation meant everything.
My hope is to be able to extend that type of love to many people. That’s how I hope to show up in spaces, to be able to be that hospitable, generous, kind, loving.
What do you recommend to us, in each of these categories:
- Reading – How We Get Free, Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective
- Listening – Go to a live music show, for whatever your favorite genre is. I live right next to an elementary-middle school, and there’s a jazz band class that plays outside every Friday. They’re good, these kids are SO good. How lucky am I to be near their practice every Friday? It happens at 8:30, and some people aren’t up by then, but I’m up, and super-stoked to have it.
- Eating – On the cusp of summer turning into fall, I start to break out the heartier stews and soups again. I love chicken and rice in soup. There are so many different versions, but for me, it’s usually chicken and rice congee. But just like I said go to any live music show, cook a hearty stew or soup for yourself, whatever your pleasure is.
- Watching – Everything Everywhere All at Once. It’s back in theaters, since they’ve re-released it with an eight-minute blooper-reel at the end. To me, it’s a beautiful movie about kindness, family, finding hope in yourself and leaving regret behind.
- Laughing – A friend used to say to me, there’s Type 1 fun and Type 2 fun. Type 1 fun is when you have fun in the moment. Type 2 fun is when it’s a terrible, hard, painful, miserable experience, but you laugh about it later. There are totally also experiences that fall into neither category. But what I’ll encourage now is to reflect on a Type 2 fun experience and see if you can find something that you can laugh at.
- Wildcard – Do something that you’re uncomfortable with, try something new. For me, I said I went fishing the other week. The first time I cast out my line, I dropped the entire rod. The instructor was like, ‘lift your finger off the button,’ and I’m like, ‘cool,’ and then I just dropped the entire rod in front of everybody. I thought, this is exactly why I’m here, to learn how to fish. I think a past version of me would have been a little embarrassed, and mad at myself for doing that, and my emotions would have ruined the experience. But instead, I chose to show up humbly, and accept I had a lot to learn and practice. If I can’t be honest about what I don’t know, then what can I really be honest about?