Response Ability

The Latin root of the word responsibility reveals its true meaning: the capacity to respond, to react.

- Paulo Coelho, The Warrior of the Light

How will you react to challenges from climate change to aging?As it becomes harder to predict events in this age of uncertainty, the ability to respond to them effectively and efficiently becomes increasingly important. The ability to respond to the next change—the next storm, the next political upheaval, or whatever it might be—could make the difference between life and death. How, for example, will you respond to the next wildfire or hurricane? We call the capacity to respond to these human-induced disasters resilience. As someone who teaches and practices resilient design, I’m aware of how critical it is that buildings and their inhabitants react effectively and efficiently to these disasters.

I also see the value of responsible reaction to change as I age but remain active. As we age, we become more uncertain in our movements; broken hips from falls, for instance, are common among the elderly. How will you respond to the challenges that movement poses as you age? Resilient movement, natural movement, is, in part, the ability to react effectively and efficiently to environmental and physical challenges to our movement. As someone who practices natural movement daily and is certified to teach MovNat, I’ve seen how a practice like MovNat can help prepare us for those challenges just as the resilient design of our built environment can help prepare us for disasters.

I’ve had many fine teachers (Danny Clark in natural movement and Gavin Smith in resilient design among them,) but in many ways, the best teacher of natural movement and resilient design is nature. I study how animals move and how they respond to environmental challenges including the disasters imposed by human-induced climate change. I share nature’s lessons in resilient design with my students and in my other writings and talks. Here, I’ll just say that we can learn a lot about how to respond effectively and efficiently to challenges from aging to climate change from the “response abilities” of animals, plants, and nature as a whole.

Nature also knows no future or past, only this moment. Nature is always in the Now, as Eckhart Tolle would say, and being in the moment is a critical practice that transcends even natural movement and resilient design in helping us to deal with the challenges and uncertainties facing us today.

A responsible Warrior is not someone who takes the weight of the world on his shoulders, but someone who has learned to deal with the challenges of the moment.

- Paulo Coelho, The Warrior of the Light