“Change your opinions, keep to your principles.
Change your leaves, keep intact your roots.”
- Victor Hugo
I attached this quote to a map that hangs above my desk. I love this quote. It embodies in a picture what we must do if we are to work effectively with people of other cultures. Some things must change. In fact, many things may change. The problem with that is as we change, it may feel as if we are losing our very identity. The leaves of a tree help a botanist identify the type of tree. If the leaves have changed, it’s confusing for the botanist. Really, it’s confusing for anyone trying to understand the tree. It may even be confusing for the tree.
Yet as we change, some things — our core — must remain. Perhaps the hardest work for an interculturalist is the continuing conversation with oneself about what is leaf and what is root. What can I change and what must I keep. We may have once thought that something was so important that we could never change being that way, only to decide later that we can. Or we may have gone into a different culture thinking we would leave our own cultural tradition behind, only to discover it represents our core, our roots, in such a way that can’t give it up — at least not at the time.
So the conversation will continue: what is leaf that can change? What is root that gives me life and must remain?
Hmmm… that is a great quote. Fun to mull over.
Well stated my friend. I resonate with the thoughts and questions that you have put forth here.
This must be why as intercultruralists, the more we learn the more we know how much there is to learn. And why after we think we have let all the leaves fall, they seem to grow back again.
Beautiful analogy Beth. I look forward to watching you in your next seasons.