Wisdom in Action, Andrew Pochter and Martin Richard
Wisdom in Action, Andrew Pochter and Martin Richard
Posted On: Saturday, July 13, 2013
Our individual wisdom is what shapes our leadership and determines our humanity. It comes out of how we see, feel and interpret joys and sorrow in life and what we’ve learned from others.
How we live and act on our wisdom is our legacy, a true measure of how we inspire and impact others.
The deaths of eight-year old Martin Richard in the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings and Kenyon College student Andrew Pochter, a bystander in Egypt’s June 2013 political uprising, are among the more recent tragic consequences of a world-wide breakdown in wisdom when intransigent intolerance and random violence become the overpowering language.
A makeshift memorial in Boston’s Copley Square, bound on three sides by what seemed like thousands of running shoes, framed the tributes to those killed and the more than 260 injured in the bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
Martin’s parents were injured in the blasts and his sister, an aspiring dancer, lost a leg. The tribute to Martin focused on his own words: “No more hurting people. Peace.”
He had written that message on a poster for a class project after 17-year old Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida.
Andrew Pochter was in Alexandria, Egypt for an internship teaching English to children Martin Richard’s age when he was stabbed to death watching a protest. He had planned to return after college, his parents said, “to live and work there in pursuit of peace and understanding.” At his funeral July 12, 2013, his sister read a letter he had sent recently to a 12-year old he’d been mentoring the previous five summers at a camp for at-risk youth in Maryland. The camper was graduating from the program.
In the letter, Andrew congratulated him on all he’d accomplished, called out his strengths and offered snippets of Andrew’s own wisdom, telling the 12-year old: to surround himself with friends who do “good deeds” and care about his future, not blame others for their mistakes, and speak with confidence “because your personal confidence is just as important as your education.”
We can’t know what Martin or Andrew or any of the thousands of youth killed each year by political, religious and sexual violence or other forms of rage could have contributed by their leadership had they lived. However, globally there has been a huge loss of potential talent and contribution. We know that Martin and Andrew, among so many others, knew the wisdom of peace.
That legacy in a world torn up by intolerance — the opposite of peace — fueled by the legacy of so many others who died in service of peace demand that leaders at every level start by acting on their wisdom to rout out intolerance in their own spheres crippling governments, workplaces, families, and communities, and then advance the conversation to act globally.
Intolerance is poison. The lyrics of “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught” in the iconic 1949 musical “South Pacific” (which Rodgers and Hammerstein adapted from James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific) continue to resonate through Broadway revivals and community theaters. It reminds us of what we have yet to undo:
“You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear….You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late, Before you are six or seven or eight, To hate all the people your relatives hate, You’ve got to be carefully taught.”
Gael O’Brien is a catalyst for leaders leading with purpose and impact. She is an executive coach, culture coach, and TEDx speech coach with a corporate and public affairs background. Gael is President of Strategic Opportunities Group. In addition to publishing The Week in Ethics, she is a columnist for Business Ethics Magazine, an Advisory Board member at the Hoffman Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University and a Senior Fellow at The Institute for Social Innovation, Babson College.
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Gael provided DTS a vision for developing global strategies that maximized our engineering resources, highlighted our industry expertise and focused our strengths as a design engineering and manufacturing company….
Gael,
I loved, loved, loved this column, both for the content and the construction of language! The message also made me think of Malala Yousafzai the 16 year old who survived the Taliban’s attempts to kill her, who gave a wonderful, life-affirmingl speech at the UN this week.
Thank you for mentioning Malala Yousafzai’s speech at the UN. It was very powerful.The BBC recording of her remarks is included at http://theweekinethics.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/the-week-in-ethics-peace-education-equality-and-malala-yousafzai/