“Who are you?” and “What do you value?” These are basic questions that come up in conversations about ethics and civics. In Jesuit tradition, which is relevant to a good number of colleges and universities, we might add, “Whose are you?” or “For whom are you?”
Self- and organizational awareness requires us to ask these questions, especially in times of distress. We cannot truly answer them without deep reflection. Recently, I wrote a piece where I highlighted the importance of this awareness, through embodiment and identity. I offered that attentiveness concerning the multiple aspects of our being, such as bodily realities as basic as high blood pressure, might be more tangible than the illusory paradigm of work-life balance and therefore more catalytic to thriving.
The realities of our present global condition heighten my thinking on this topic. If knowing who I am and what I value are key to my ethics, then understanding you and what you value are essential to providing support.
Servant leadership is a ubiquitous notion, but to serve you is to understand and bear some of what weighs on you, the “weight” (svaras) as a probable root of the Latin servare. (Think of the German adjective schwer, meaning “hard” or “difficult.”) To serve those to whom we belong well, attentiveness and affinity are key. Affinity and awareness amount to a form of love. Serving well is love in the time of COVID-19, and I offer these three steps to consider.
Step 1: Know Thyself. “Who am I?” impacts every aspect of how a person functions in the world. During this intensified time of the novel coronavirus pandemic, one could conduct a study of the link between biography and mindset simply by lining up opinions from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other national and international newspapers. Some snub identity politics, but identity is evident in every proposed policy and response to COVID-19. Wealth, poverty, gender, geographic location, profession, and many other markers of identity inform perspectives. As Dr. Kwame Anthony Appiah opined, there are certainly pitfalls to speaking “as a ____.” If I speak exclusively and exhaustively “as a _____,” people begin to elide the instances and degrees to which I might stand apart from ______. These expectations are, in fact, stereotypes.
Notwithstanding the pitfalls of identity, however, recognizing the advantages and limitations of one’s selfhood is essential to how one relates to others. While I might not speak exclusively or exhaustively as a Black man — and it might be presumptuous (and dangerous) to pretend to do so — embodied experiences and identities are starting points for how we enter any conversation involving other human beings.
Knowing oneself (one’s ethics) influences how one engages with others (one’s civics). We bring all of ourselves to every interaction, notwithstanding the illusion that the suit and tie that I wear can cover decades of formation. Understanding this helps us to know what we value, how we express those values, and how we might bring them to bear, in the main.
