zlien co-founder and former executive Jane Wolfe spoke this morning as a guest for Harvard Memorial Church’s Morning Prayers (@Memorial_Church).
Harvard’s Morning Prayers is a 375-year-old tradition called “the most beautiful thing in Boston” by Alex Beam in the New York Times.
Jane delivered a five-minute sermon that works a lot like a TED talk this morning, on Mardi Gras day, reflecting on the true meaning of the carnival season.
While a co-founder and former executive at zlien, Jane is no longer involved with the company’s day-to-day work. She now attends Harvard Divinity School where she is a candiate for a MTS I degree (’14). Her interests are in social entrepreneurship.
Her remarks are below. We’ll provide them to you here as a way to wish you a Happy Mardi Gras!
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Good morning.
I’d like to start with a few words from the Gospel of Matthew chapter 18: verses 1-3
The disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” 2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Nat invited me to this podium with a letter, and suggested I should speak about what gets me up in the morning.
Part of the answer is biology, of course. For an unfortunate mass of people around the globe, it may be solely biology. Family and work problems, money problems, study problems, day after day of the same stimuli. The days just blend together, don’t they?
In fact, those who study memory have an explanation for why the world seems to speed up as you grow older – and it speaks to this point. As a child everything is new and nothing is routine.
But then you start to understand the weather, and the subway route, and the school day’s schedule and these routines all smash together without any distinctive markers. As you get older, in other words, you start to run out of mental landmarks, and the years just whizz by without you able to segregate one day from another. Time….flies.
But not for the child. Not yet.
Let me tell you a Carnival story. I’m a native New Orleanian, and today the people of New Orleans are waking up for Mardi Gras day.
Now, I’m well aware of Mardi Gras’ reputation, mostly fueled by media reports from Bourbon Street of people drinking beer and exposing themselves, but these 15 second television clips are sensational exceptions to the celebration.
The Carnival season is fit for a family.
That’s where my story starts.
You see, I’ve seen hundreds of parades, but it wasn’t just two weeks ago when I learned the true reason for the season, when I watched a parade through the eyes of my 15 month old granddaughter Claire.
As Claire viewed her very first parade, I peered into her fresh, sparkling eyes where everything was new, and saw the world through the eyes of a child. Funny that although I studied the history of Mardi Gras it wasn’t until this moment that I was able to visualize the ancient religious and cultural traditions that forged the path of celebration before us. With the Carnival crowd surrounding our senses – I was able to see the wonderment of things anew and why we celebrate at all.
What gets the people of New Orleans up this morning.
They drag their families to the parade route, through this morning’s rainy weather, and they camp out for hours among a crowd — but why? For the plastic beads of which they already have hundreds at home?
My moment with Claire on the parade route two weeks ago created a mental landmark. How difficult it is to breakout of routine and create these landmarks.
And here we all are on Harvard’s historic campus. Here I am.
A teenage mom turned businesswoman, I’ve got 30+ years of routine on my résumé. And then I wake up one morning here at the Yard, a student in the Harvard community. My existence here is a gift that seemingly helped reclaim my childlike wonder. Everything is new.
All across campus for centuries, professors engaged in their life’s work passionately as they shared their tokens of intellect to their students. It’s easy to get stunned by the assignments and the routine, but with fresh eyes you can open your mind to see histories and perspectives never known. Even for me, someone thrown into academia from afar, where everything was new and as Robert Frost would say — “golden” — “so dawn goes down to day,” and the routine sets in. Nothing gold can stay. It becomes a struggle to always wake up and look at things fresh. To make mental landmarks.
As New Orleans celebrates Mardi Gras today, and the world celebrates Carnival, they simply are celebrating the fleetingness of life, and preparing for Ash Wednesday tomorrow, when they will be soberly reminded of the collective journey we share.
Whether in the classroom at Harvard or on the streets of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Let today be a celebration for us all.
Let today remind us that regardless of our age or intellect, there is so much to be learned and so much wonder to see in our world, if we just wake up each morning and look through the eyes of what – in the face of all our world has to offer — what we actually are.
What if…we continued to see our world through the eyes of a child?
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