The Challenge of Our Time

This is a challenging time. We need to not just balance, but hold nearly conflicting ideas in our minds and hearts simultaneously. The yin cannot exist without the yang, and we are called to:

  • To recognize the ideal, and accept the lack of the ideal in the path we need to take to build to that ideal.
  • To quickly iterate, learn, embrace failures without fault, and continue to move forward.
  • To love people and hate groups (mobs) at the same time.
  • To respect the rule of law, and fight against the warped system of law as it stands, and as it is implemented.
  • To hate the ideas of people when these ideas are not in line with what you know, but to respect the people enough to hear them out. Combine this with respect for your own intellect so that you gain value from that new insight – either to inform your own view’s explanation or to change that view.

We must strive to be the most intellectual, empathetic, and connective age that ever was.

Why is this part of a blog that is mostly about sustainability and architecture? Because this is what architects, at least good ones, do.

  • We hold the whole in mind as we work on the details, and never forget to realize the details affect the whole.
  • We respect the inputs of people, and inform those inputs with our knowledge to guide us to successful design.
  • We recognize context as we change it.
  • We strive to improve the context without removing any value from it.
  • We see constraints as information to succeed.
  • We meet and exceed codes, as we inform them.
  • We understand data, math, and building science alongside and complimentary to art, nature, and beauty.

I have hope that this dichotomy of skills and understanding of relationships will help me to not only navigate this strange time in which we live, but that I will be able to serve in this moment to help me and others live in it well.

Jodi

 

 

 

2 Others like this post, how about you? (no login required)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

6 + 4 =

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.