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October 16, 2024
Dear University Community,
If you are paying attention, odds are you feel overwhelmed. The more out of control the world seems, the more frustration we tend to feel. In these moments, reaching for ideals and grappling with ideas can seem futile. But I want to challenge you to reconsider. Pause and reflect: What is in your control? What can you do? I want to offer that on the simplest level, you can choose to be calm and center yourself. Does it feel like the world is on fire? Yes. Can you be deliberate about how you show up to further limit harm? Absolutely!
The purpose of being calm is not to minimize or ignore the pain or anguish, but to recognize that acting and speaking from a place where you feel out of control can take a situation from bad to worse. Imagine what could happen if we were able to resist the urge to run away from a difficult moment, and instead calm ourselves enough to enter a conversation with curiosity and compassion for ourselves and others? Kazu Haga, in the video clip below, offers that it can be as simple as realizing when you are in panic and choosing to take a deep breath. Don’t discount the transformative difference that this small step can make in the moment. Breathing gives you the space to pause to choose to engage in a way that can maintain a relationship rather than destroy it.
Be calm and carry on.
In service,
Enobong (Anna) Branch, Ph.D.
Senior Vice President for Equity and Professor
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