Desmond Tutu’s wisdom on life’s frustrations.
Dear Friends,
This June’s idea comes from my manuscript-in-progress, Are We Going to Be Okay? I began this project in response to a question from my daughter (from which the book takes its title). But it’s since grown into an attempt to share with readers everything I’ve learned about how to be okay in a world that sometimes feels full of anguish—and how to work toward a better world together. I’m honored to get to share wisdom from the luminaries I’ve worked with over the course of my career. First up is Archbishop Desmond Tutu, aka Arch.
I haven’t shared some of my own writing here, so I’m especially excited to hear your thoughts.
Riding Shotgun With Tutu
When I set up Idea Architects, I made a list of the people in the world I most wanted to work with and learn from.
Desmond Tutu was the first name I wrote down.
On January 20, 1986—the first-ever Martin Luther King Jr. Day—I was a college student sitting in an auditorium waiting for him to lecture on the cruelty of apartheid in a moment that felt electric. Here was a Black man who had won the Nobel Peace Prize for opposing one of the most racist regimes in history, speaking on the first national holiday for a Black American. The applause was thunderous even before he spoke.
When he finally did, his first words were “Oh dear.” He grinned, his eyes twinkling, as the clapping went on.
How did Archbishop Tutu actually live with such joy in the face of crisis, brutality, and oppression? I wanted to know how a great man lives in the real world. How, ultimately, a moral leader drives in traffic.
Years later, thanks to serendipity or synchronicity, I met his agent, Lynn Franklin. After her introduction, I asked Arch ( as I was told to call him), what is in your heart to give the world? We began working together on what would become the book God Has a Dream. While he was teaching at the University of North Florida, I visited, joining him on his silent morning walk, praying with him, and interviewing him in every spare moment.
During one conversation, he checked his watch and realized it was time to teach. I went to sit in on his class, eager to record and learn as much as I could for the book.
We walked out to his rental car, a full-size, black Buick LeSabre. His right hand had been weakened by polio as a child, so he reached over to the center console with his left hand to shift into drive.
As we pulled onto I-95, I peppered him with questions, trying to get clarity on how he saw the spiritual architecture of the world.
Suddenly, a car swerved in front of us. Arch had to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision.
Once we were safe, his right arm leaped off the steering wheel. “There are some amazing drivers!” he laughed.
This was the moment I had been waiting for. At last, the question I’d carried since college was about to be answered: how does a Nobel Peace Laureate deal with the everyday challenges we all face?
“Hold on,” I said, now that we had shaken off the fear. “Can you tell me what just went through your mind?”
“Well,” Arch admitted, “I did get scared, as we all do. But then I thought—maybe that driver is rushing to a hospital. Maybe his baby is about to be born. Maybe a loved one is dying.” He explained that he blessed the driver’s safety.
With Arch and my wife, Rachel
I thought, but did not say, that maybe the other guy was just a bad driver. Or that, had I been driving, I’d have had something a lot stronger to say in response.
My reflex, as a native New Yorker, was to assume the worst—that the other driver was a jerk, incompetent, and had no business being on the road.
Arch’s was to imagine the best. His mind turned toward mercy, not judgment. He saw our common frailty. So instead of cursing the other driver, Arch had blessed him. And just like that, it was over. No fuming. No road rage. No ulcer beginning to form.
As we continued talking, Arch explained the concept of “ubuntu”—I am because we are. He believed that this ancient African principle was one of humanity’s oldest truths: that our lives are not separate, but braided. We are who we are through one another.
“We are all cousins, really,” Arch said. He meant it not as a metaphor but as a fact. I would later discover that we are descended from the same two human beings: Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam. Arch was not just giving a spiritual insight but also a scientific one.
It is so easy to stay wrapped in our own story—to shake our fist at the idiot in the other car—but Arch reminded me we can choose to wonder instead: What pain or panic might have made him drive that way?
“You will be surprised by the joy,” Arch later said at the Joy Dialogues with the Dalai Lama in words that would echo throughout my life, “when you go beyond your own self-regard.”
That experience on I-95 showed me something else: the sliver of time between reaction and response. The possibility of choosing something other than our habituated response. Of nothing less than mental freedom.
Spiritual practice, I would come to understand, is about expanding that sliver—widening it just a little more. Giving yourself time to breathe. To pause. To choose. That’s where change begins.
Because if we can’t shift the reflexes in our own minds, how can we hope to shift the world?
The more we widen that space between trigger and response—between fear and attack, pain and projection—the more we change the quality of our relationships, our communities, our future.
Personal transformation isn’t separate from global transformation. It’s the beginning of it. We can’t hope to change the world if we don’t change our own consciousness. Bless instead of curse. Befriend instead of denounce. Or, as Arch put it: “The quality of human life on our planet is nothing more than the sum total of our daily interactions with one another. Each time we help, and each time we harm, we have a dramatic impact on our world.”
My course at the Desmond Tutu Traffic School was complete.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this brief excerpt—and what else you’d want to know about the wisdom of Arch, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Jane Goodall, and other Idea Architects authors! Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments or reply directly to this email.
(Thanks also to the book ambassadors who agreed to read and leave their comments on the evolving manuscript! If you’d like to participate in our group read and write, please click here.)
In other exciting community news:
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The Today Show ran a touching segment on our dearly departed Edie Eger
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Dr. Ayesha Sherzai, co-author of The Alzheimer’s Solution, was on Mel Robbins’ podcast to share 5 simple habits that boost brain health
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People revealed the cover for Graham Farmelo’s forthcoming biography of Stephen Hawking, Hawking: His Life and Work
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Dr. Lisa Miller was on Jay Shetty’s podcast to discuss our innate neurologic capacity for spiritual awareness
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Diana Chapman was on The Tim Ferris Show, where she shared her wisdom on reducing drama in your life.
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In National Geographic, Suzanne Simard wrote about the healing power of forests in the face of grief
In friendship,
Doug & the IA Team—Alyssa, Elizabeth, Jordan, Kelly, Rebecca, Sarah, Shannon, Tom & Wenonah