My name Van Thi is meaningless without a story.
It traces a history of colonialism, diaspora, and marginalisation through its translation from Chinese to Vietnamese to English. But its origin story, its Chinese meaning as “rhyming poem” is the one I resonate with and the one I share with collective humanity.
My mission is to help build a social world that is based on conscious awareness and mindful actions. I advocate for an eco-spiritual approach to social change because the roots to our social-ecological problems stem from our disconnect from nature, especially, the nature within. That is why, I embrace the broader meaning of “eco” as home. Eco-spirituality, to me, means finding our way home towards the oneness of the world.
Narratives change lives
Although the path towards this spiritual home can only be found within us, our relationship with the social world depends on narratives. The narratives about who we are have kept us in repetitive patterns of pain, historically as a civilization and also in our personal lives. Changing narratives can change lives, but this change requires awareness and awareness doesn’t always arise without struggle. For me, this awareness first appeared as an existential crisis in the 2nd year of my PhD studies. That was when I first began to realize how much I had deprived myself of happiness because of internal beliefs of what I deserved in life.
On the outside, I had a fairly “successful” young adult life. I had been a top student. Smart and creative, I had easily succeeded in becoming a landscape architect—a role I once envisioned as my dream career. I was regularly complemented for my intelligence, talents, and work ethic, but internally, I was struggling to feel comfortable in my own skin. I yearned to be recognized for my sensitivity and my vulnerability but the fear of being seen was greater than my desire to be truly appreciated. The truth was that I didn’t know the difference between who I was and who others thought I should be. Neither did I fully appreciate the parts of myself that I wanted others to value.
I didn’t know that I was highly empathic (i.e., intuitively attuned to the energies and emotions of people around me), but like many other wounded empaths, I believed that all that emotional baggage was mine to carry. Through years of healing, which involved many things (including psychotherapy, tarot and oracle card readings, crystals, meditation, osteopathy, reiki, sound therapy, homeopathy, completing my PhD, learning and training in ecopsychology, Human Design, life coaching, and forest therapy), did I understand that my beliefs and my identity were entrenched in larger intergenerational and collective subconscious narratives of oppression, shame, and not-belonging.
The only way for me to move through this chaos was to summon a power greater than the destructive forces of our social-psychological structure itself. And so, I came to realize that the ultimate power to personal and collective healing is faith.
Flourishing in the between
I still find patterns of self-deprivation and self-doubt lingering in the corners of my conscious and subconscious mind. But I know that admitting to being wounded is an act of self-empowerment and a prerequisite for healing. Recognizing that these wounds are also collective and intergenerational makes room for compassion. If we live life mindfully, every phase of life is an opportunity to heal, not only for ourselves, but also for the collective.
Sometimes I envision life as a continuous hiking trip on a diverse landscape. This sojourn is our temporary stay on Earth as human beings, but also our timeless engagement with the truth of our divinity. Each piece of landscape we encounter teaches us a lesson about this duality. My PhD journey was a chapter of life that taught me about what it means to “know” and what it means to “flourish”. As my research offered me the chance to break through stifling academic traditions to explore the space between knowledge and wisdom, I was also pushed into breaking my comfort zone of being invisible and finding false security through the mask of intellectualism.
In the years that followed, I learned to appreciate liminal spaces, however uncomfortable, because the in-between is where our greatest opportunity for healing and transformation occurs. Simultaneously, I learned that flourishing, most profoundly, is a liminal process made of continuous conscious choice-making, and not an end goal. Flourishing is a reciprocal phenomenon between individual and environment. I am relational—with landscapes, with nature, with other people—because I exist out of the connection between me and the world. But collective flourishing depends on individual sovereignty.
And so, my story is just as important as the stories I collect from others, whether that be through research or through the simple process of life. I am the piece of the puzzle that grounds my knowing. And I am the authority of my own life’s flourishing.
My name is meaningless without a story, but I am not meaningless without my name.
Our stories are important because we can re-construct them to change the meanings in our lives. Therefore, we are not victims of our stories.
Let’s make meaning to the lives behind our names—through our stories and not because of them. We may not know where our stories will lead us until we’ve lived them out. This process of living out our stories and making value from them, in real-time, is how we nurture our flourishing commons.
The Story of A Flourishing Commons
If my name carries the story of my individual identity in this world, then A Flourishing Commons is the story of my shared existence in the collective consciousness. This story involves our tragic separation from nature—our eco-spiritual home—and our commitment to find our way back to oneness through a continuous learning process of self-love.
Just like the Greek classics, our Tragedy starts with a self-fulfilling prophecy, in this case about our unworthiness to exist on Earth. Like the Hero’s Journey, we learn to navigate the temptations and storms of our oppressive psychological and institutional structures. While A Flourishing Commons is our destination, the story has yet to reach an ending.
I invite you to claim your participation in the building of our Flourishing Commons.