Last week I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Bayo Akomolafe on The Good Work Hour, and was fortunate enough to see him speak in Great Barrington, MA a few days later. Both discussions were far reaching and certainly an hour on a radio show could only cover so much, but what was offered was deep, personal and from a place that truly questions our relationship to all existence.
It occurs to me that we as humans have grown accustomed to a human-centric view of the world. I’m not faulting us in that statement. I see us as a young species, still learning our way, still learning about ourselves, so extending our consciousness out far enough to include not just each other but other lifeforms may take some work. But nothing worthwhile comes easy, as they say. Is it possible that we are outgrowing the usefulness of our human-centric perception? Is it possible that we could benefit from a less human-centric perspective? Whether we wish it or not, reality is not dictated by the view of a single species.
“The world transcends and exceeds and spills beyond story, it spills beyond meaning. The world isn’t collapsable to the meanings we make of it. The world exists beyond that.” – Bayo Akomolafe, Good Work Hour, July 2, 2024
During our radio interview, Bayo spoke of a moment with his son that transformed his thinking. I’m not going to give it away here. Bayo is a storyteller of the heart as well as the mind (not truly separate) and he shares his own stories, stories passed down, stories shared with him from life in numerous forms. I wish for you to listen so that his son’s wisdom can continue to resonate further, so that we may all lean into new ways of being.
“There are things to do, things to say and things to perform and things to be performed by that we don’t know anything about because we are so caught up in the institutional anxieties that have become paramount, that have become commonplace that we lose sight of the other ways of being in the world. And if my work is about anything, speaking about Good Work, it is about opening up new frontiers within colonial closures.” – Bayo Akomolafe, Good Work Hour, July 2, 2024