After hearing this term for the first time I quickly looked it up. It means “I am what I am because of who we all are”. Or the Zulus from South Africa would say “Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu”, which means that a person is a person through other persons. We affirm our humanity when we acknowledge that of others.

This philosophy of Ubuntu, although nameless, has been in my heart for a long time, slowly changing and morphing my understanding of the world. A deeper understanding of this philosophy couldn’t have come at a more needed time. What has emerged during this last year and this new presidency has forced me to deal with an array of emotions, questions, and given me the desire to understand different perspectives.

Growing up in a Christian home I quickly learned that the greatest message in the Bible is love. It was preached in my school, church, chapel, and small groups. Yet as I grew up I didn’t see this reflected in the actions of my community. There was rarely compassion for those with less, open doors to the homeless, nor love for those running from war-torn countries and homes. I saw how judgement, fear and even hatred permeated the culture and the body of believers that I was part of, so I found myself slowly walking away.

Love has always been the greatest truth for me and I have continued to search for it wherever I have traveled. I have found it pulsing through the veins of almost every religion and tight-knit community. Ubuntu also is an embodiment of love, as well as our interconnectedness.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu of South Africa discussed Ubuntu as “We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world.”

Ubuntu is the essence of being human and we cannot exist in isolation. Desmond Tutu said that one who practices ubuntu is “open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, based from a proper self assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.”

This past year there were times when I would listen to the news and become physically sick from hearing statements of hate professed from leaders in our country. I remember listening to the radio on my morning commute as an ELL teacher to refugees and immigrants and hearing the proposition of a ban based on an individual’s religion. The thought of this taking place in our country, due to ignorance, fear, and hate forced me to pull over thinking I was going to vomit. Ubuntu says when our brothers and sisters suffer we suffer.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”