Dear Friends of the Institute,
Nothing is the same. We are approaching the Vernal Equinox of 2021, and nothing is the same.
Yes, in the last year, commerce in some parts of the globe ground to a halt. Yes, as a species we are suffering more losses, and burying more elders. As a society we are seeing the fissures that imply some lives are more valuable than others. As healers we are at a loss to help the long-haulers who have gone for months without a day of wellness. In our cities and towns there is hopelessness, there are evictions, there is addiction, there is hunger, and there are children who have been left behind.
But I think that the possibility of transformation is directly proportional to the need for that transformation. At the Institute we are called to integrate, and today that has come to mean something profoundly different than it did in 2020.
We are looking at our family, our organization, our city, our state, our culture, indeed our planet, with new eyes. We see climate change, and the catastrophic ramifications of inaction. We see the pandemic, and the way that it has illuminated inequality around the world. We see disease, and the ultimately fatal implications of medical systems that remain focused on illness instead of wellness.
It is our job to ask hard questions. It is our job to create and support a community of people and organizations who are not only seeing the problems, but who are also committed to finding the answers, and putting those ideas into action.
The Institute has always been a home base for researchers whose lives are devoted to wellness – a place for brilliant minds to collaborate, do their work, and share their vision. We still are. But now we see that individual wellness cannot exist without planetary health. The world is in a critical moment of transformation – and we are, too.
Change never comes easily. Nothing important ever does, and there’s nothing more important than the work that is in front of us right now. I’ve been training my whole life for this moment, and so have our partners. Welcome to the future.
