Ubuntu

Ubuntu, a word from the Nguni languages of southern Africa, names the idea that a person becomes a person through other persons. Your humanity is tied to theirs. Nelson Mandela drew a lesson about freedom that fits it: a freedom that stops at one household, one side, or one cell is unfinished, because the people left outside are part of what a person is.

Ask who is still outside the liberty you just claimed. Winning a right and then using it to keep the next house from the same right has stopped the freedom at your own door.

A person remains a person. The tie does not erase a refusal, a name, or a disagreement. Ubuntu says their good is bound up with yours. It does not say the group replaces the one who speaks.

The next house

A street wins the right to the well. The next street is left with the bucket and the walk. The winners call the work finished because their own house can drink.

Ubuntu, read with Mandela, asks about the next street. A person is not finished while the person beside them is shut out of the same freedom.

Try this today Next time you win something, ask who is left out of it and how to widen it.