Source: “In Nature Nothing Exists Alone” -Rachel Carson
The post includes a series of lovely black and white pictures accompanied by a Rachel Carson quote. Sometimes, I forget that even when I am alone I am not alone. There are always other sentient beings and non-sentient beings present.
Being mindful and attentive helps me understand that solitude is a time of sharing. It is not being alone or lonely. Mindfulness is a gathering in my thoughts and heart. It is an imagining of who and what is essential in living.
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About ivonprefontaine
In keeping with bell hooks and Noam Chomsky, I consider myself a public and dissident intellectual. Part of my work is to move beyond (transcend) institutional dogmas that bind me to defend freedom, raising my voice to be heard on behalf of those who seek equity and justice in all their forms.
I completed my PhD in Philosophy of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA. My dissertation and research was how teachers experience becoming teachers and their role as leaders.
I focus on leading, communicating, and innovating in organizations. This includes mindfuful servant-leadership, World Cafe events, Appreciative Inquiry, and expressing one's self through creativity. I offer retreats, workshops, and presentations that can be tailored to your organzations specific needs.
I published peer reviewed articles about schools as learning organizations, currere as an ethical pursuit, and hope as an essential element of adult eductaion. I published three poems and am currently preparing my poetry to publish as an anthology of poetry.
I present on mindful leadership, servant leadership, schools as learning organizations, how teachers experience becoming teachers, assessement, and critical thinking. I facilitate mindfulness, hospitality retreats. and World Cafe Events using Appreciative Inquiry.
I am writing and researching about various forms of leadership, how teachers inform and form their identity as a particular teacher, schools as learning organizations, hope and its anticipatory relationship with the future, and hope as an essential element in learning.
Teacher as Transformer 
I recently had the chance to read a lot about Rachel in preparation for a blog post I did. She’s from my hometown and I was amazed by how little I knew about her. I was more amazed about her, after I learned what I did.
We can just take things and people for granted even when they are or were close to us.
It’s always interesting to read things like this. Being female and growing up in a big city you learn to be alert to everything going on around you. You have to live that way. Sure, you can sometimes feel safe enough to forget about what’s going on but usually you have to always be aware of your environment, so all the quite and mindfulness doesn’t seem familiar to me other than being mindful of who is walking behind me, or coming toward me, driving next to the curb, coming out of the doorway, etc. I don’t think about doing that, I just do it, like everyone else…it’s a way of meditating and splitting our attention, or multitasking, I guess. Different environments and genders. You probably don’t even think about who’s in the parking lot when you’re putting your groceries in the car.
Yes, there are many factors that influence how we react/respond to the immediate world around us. I grew up in a small town and spent a lot of time out in what we call nature. That still informs me at a deep level, so deep I take it for granted.
I think it’s fascinating because no one taught us how to BE, we just became, according to where we lived. It’s not as if there are rule books, after all:) Nature for us was the park and a backyard. Mostly we played in the alley or street, using the sewer covers for bases when we played ball. Definitely a different life style. The houses and apartment buildings were close to each other and I would sit on my bedroom window and the boy next-door would sit on his back stairs and we would talk to each other. LOL Interesting how different life is for everyone.
It is different. Differences make a difference. You are right. We do not get a rule book, which is the way it should be.
Alone for me is Never lonely. I grew up in the foothills of mountains ringing what was to become a big city. When it started transforming, I left for the woods of Maine and never looked back. My soul needs silence. Aloha, Ivon.
Mine does, too. Aloha, Bela.
Modern man does not understand this. When a species becomes extict the entire food chain is altered. Disrespect for habitat is the main reason.
Carl, you sound like Wendell Berry. He is one of my favourite authors on the subject of environmentalism.
I will find out about him.