Wayfinding in Our Work and Our World

As we begin to emerge from the pandemic - returning to work, travelling, taking up prior activities - many of us find ourselves rethinking how to be in a world that has become somewhat unrecognizable. Wayfinding during the Great Resignation, the onset of an unexpected war, the closing of global mindsets (something many of us never imagined would happen in a million years) has become a challenging task, indeed. How do we find our way in a world where so much seems unmoored? What are the tools we need?

This issue’s theme of wayfinding is inspired by our recent undergrad Global Citizenship Program’s study trip to Hawai’i, where we learned not only about how Hawaiian cultural values inform socially committed work but also a bit about traditional Polynesian wayfinding techniques that have been revived in Hawai’i in recent decades. Hawaiian navigators have relearned how to sail across the Pacific without any technology by reading the path of the stars, observing flight patterns of birds and studying wind and wave types. While we are certainly not anti-technology, this return to using one’s bodily senses and traditional ways of knowing has a certain appeal.

Our contributors thought about this question of finding one’s way in the world. And, not unsurprisingly, came back with widely varying perspectives. The sheer range of responses is quietly spacious and reassuring - they remind us that paths open and moorings abound even in times of upheaval.

Three contributors write from or about Hawai’i. Each in her own way speaks of the importance of the natural world as a source of rootedness. Phyllis Look guides forest bathing on the island of Oahu and shares a video about her work that will make you wish you could smell, touch and listen to the forest with her, as we had the privilege to do. Hannah Horan’s poem, “Mālama ka ‘aina,” takes us into the land and history, reminding us to slow down and pay attention. And Molly Mamaril recounts her own wayfinding story about making her way back to her Hawaiian roots through a lyrical audio segment entitled “Homecoming.”

Beyan Flomo Pewee, social entrepreneur and CEO, finds his way through his non-profit organization’s efforts in Liberia, and he offers some key principles for doing this work in “Wayfinding in Our Work and Our World.” His reflection is followed by an essay from scholars Janett Cordovés and DEB (diversity, equity and belonging) strategist Raja Gopal Bhattar who also end their essay with a list of wayfinding practices, drawing from their experiences of interfaith and identity work.

Poet Ben Bagocius offers us a perspective from the three wise men, wayfinders extraordinaires, and looks at his personal wayfinding in his second more literary-inspired poem. If the wise men had each other and Bagocius has literature, Miranda Kucinski considers the role of loneliness as a perhaps less expected, but – for many – not unfamiliar experience that also unfolds into wayfinding, especially when we find ourselves alone in other countries. And finally, writer Irene Loy traverses the pandemic by following a map through different places, an itinerary plotted by relationships’ beginnings and endings and a search for purpose, which also yields a way forward.

From my perspective, words have always provided a way through and a way towards. Whether our own stories or others’, drafts or books, private namings or public, we narrate our way through this life, and I am grateful to each person who shared some of their words and unique ways of (re)orienting themselves in the world in this past year or so. While there may be only one astronomical North Star, and most of us would be ill-equipped to sail by it, the idea that we have a range of symbolic stars in our shared human sky, each one shining a light on the path, is profoundly hopeful.

May these contributions serve as a reminder to keep the larger panorama in view and to notice who else is traveling, each in their own way, alongside us.