“I will act as if what I do makes a difference.” ~ William James
In the 1990s, I lived in Norfolk, Virginia. I exercised at a local YMCA and, as usual, I wore a ball cap from my alma mater (not Auburn). A guy who usually worked out at the same time I did regularly wore an Auburn ball cap and was an Auburn graduate. Naturally, we started talking about college football and our college experiences.
What struck me most was his love for Auburn as a school and place. Auburn, Auburn, Auburn. He went on and on about how much he loved it and wished he could move back and live there. I never forgot his passionate enthusiasm.
I could not have imagined that 15 years later, I would be living in Auburn and working at Auburn University. Today, when I meet alums visiting from out of town, and they hear that I work at Auburn, it’s deja vu all over again. So many express the same love for Auburn and yearning to move back.
Auburn President Christopher Roberts has made an institutional commitment that everyone at Auburn, all students and staff alike, should have an Auburn experience that makes them feel that way – to feel “welcomed, valued, respected, and engaged.” These closely synonymous yet distinct terms define what it means to have a true Auburn experience.
For my Norfolk friend and many others, that is how they experienced Auburn. Yet, in President Roberts’ commitment is an implicit recognition that not everyone has had or is having that experience. Some feel left out, that they don’t fit the mold of the dominant culture; they experience neglect, discrimination, and perhaps even ostracism.
My favorite line in the Auburn Creed is the last one: “I believe in Auburn and love it.” I think it’s worth reflecting on what that love looks like in practice, especially in the context of everyone feeling welcomed, valued, engaged, respected.
The thing about love is that it requires reciprocity. It is not love to simply be the recipient of all that is there for us. To love Auburn means we freely and generously “hug back” in a sense, to give back to the place and share with others the enriching goodness that we have experienced.
To be specific:
Being welcomed means an individual feels “received with pleasure and approval,” comfortable, accepted, experiencing greetings, friendliness, and acknowledgement of one’s being and presence.
Feeling valued means a person experiences recognition, appreciation, compassion, empathy, a sense of belonging, feeling seen, even cherished.
To be respected means we sense that others show a regard for our abilities and worth; we are seen as equals, that our feelings and views are valued even when others don’t necessarily agree with them.
To be engaged means being actively involved, invested, and committed to cooperative and collaborative activities in our community and beyond ourselves, things that matter to us and fulfill us.
So, how do we play our part in creating a culture where everyone feels welcomed, valued, respected, engaged?
There are four questions we can ask ourselves, questions many of us were taught as children, and our answers to those questions will tell us how well we are contributing to the universal culture President Roberts is calling for. Interestingly, they are the same four questions that underlie and inspire the sustainability movement.
Question 1: How am I showing up today? Am I consciously present and aware, fully and freely expressing my true selfhood in an egoless, joyful, and effortless way?
Question 2: Am I bringing out the best in others? What is the result of another’s interaction with me? Do they leave that interaction better or worse off because of it?
Question 3: How am I treating the world around me? How am I interacting with my community and the built environment in which I dwell? What is my impact on the living planet, locally and globally, that enables my very existence and the existence of all life on Earth?
Question 4: What am I leaving for those who come after me? Am I conscious that with every step I am leaving a legacy for those who follow me – in the next five minutes as well as those who follow me in the next generations?
If we can consistently answer those questions in a positive way, we are doing our part. We are loving ourselves and everything and everyone around us.
As a powerful framework for doing that, I recommend embracing the ethic of Servant Leadership. The term was created by Robert K. Greenleaf and in part, this is how he describes it:
“The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead.”
He distinguishes between those who want to serve first and those who want to lead first: “The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived? A servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong.”
Specific to the nature and character of a servant leader, Greenleaf makes this lovely, inspiring and aspirational observation: Servant Leaders are people who “by the quality of their inner life that [is] manifest in their presence, lift others up and make the journey possible.”
Contemplate that for a while.
