Week 08 Generate Possibilities

At the beginning of this quarter, we shared Bruce Lee’s Daoist instruction for us to “be water.” In offering this command, Lee gives us a choice - to confront the obstacles in our way or to move around them. We have sought to offer you this same choice this quarter as we recognize the identity-based social obstacles that prevent us from being our whole selves and well. What is it that we can do? How will you decide what you should do? As we discussed last week with age, taking up our agency means to have and to use our ability to understand our context, to develop opportunities for ourselves to make choices, and then to learn and continue growing future opportunities to be whole and well and to continue choosing to be whole and well.

And thinking beyond ourselves, what does it look like to apply this same choice to how we engage with others in seeking to be in just relationship with them? What does it mean to attempt to be allies in solidarity with others? When other people seek to support us and support our wholeness and wellness, what do we say to them? When we seek to do this for others, what do we ask them in order to decide what to do? And in both cases, how do we learn through these situations, especially if our impact does not match our intentions? How do we hold ourselves and each other accountable to being in just relationship?

I am posting the files

For this week, we assigned four required resources: Cole (2012), Lorde (2007), Strauss (2015), and Yousafzai (2014). You were then to pick two of the remaining six resources. Take five minutes now to reflect on the resources you read/watched and then answer the following questions:

· What are the choices and moves being made in the resource by the author? What’s the call to action the audience?

· How does context matter in the resource? When and where is the resource being presented? Who’s the audience?

· In what ways is this agency? In what ways is this allyship? In what ways might this be justice or injustice?

Once you have written out your response - again this doesn't need to take more than 5 minutes or 100 words or so - post your response to the discussion board. Please also read other people's posts and consider whether what they are saying - either about the resource or about their own lived experience - is a window or mirror for you. Post these thoughts as replies to their post if you are willing to connect with them and potentially continue the conversation.