By Patricia Lück, MB ChB(MD), MPhil PallMed, MSc MedHum
Archbishop Desmond Tutu died Christmas Day, December 25th, 2021. Many in the Mindful Practice community know of him from a quote used in one of our presentations taken from an interview in the documentary I Am. In it he tells us “We are because we belong;” as individuals we are utterly vulnerable and dependent on those around us to survive and thus belong to one another as a collective being. In this, Desmond Tutu challenges the dominant western paradigm of privileged self-interest that seems to have deeply pervaded these past two years of loss, grief, and struggle at all levels, including the micro levels of our personal family and clinical practice lives, and at the macro level of structural social and health inequities, environmental crises, and the ever expanding pandemic.