Day Three (even if I’m late): The Sustainability of Softness

I missed a day, my bad. I’m a human being, not a human doing and this week there’s been a lot of space to be.

Day 3 was soft.

After everything we’d seen (schools, farms, feeding systems, infrastructure, clinics, markets) we slowed down. I spent time with friends, put on some make up and a kimono and went out for Chinese New Year dinner. Just girls. Just food. Just laughter.

And then something small happened… small enough that you could miss it.

Jiji (my newly adopted baby sister) was drinking Chinese tea. The woman at the table next to us leaned over and asked if it was nice.

Jiji said yes.

And then Tracey (my other newly adopted younger sister) , without hesitation, said, “Pass us your cup for you to taste.”

And she did, the woman tasted it. I’m pretty sure she said it was too sweet.

It was quick. Casual. Almost nothing.

But I've replayed that exchange in my head at least 5 times a day because it truly was everything.

Later we were saying how rare that is. In most places, you don’t taste a stranger’s drink. You don’t even turn around to ask them what they’re having, you ask the waiter. You wouldn’t interrupt their table. You wouldn’t risk connection.

I think it stands out for me because it's the polar opposite of an experience I had more than a decade ago on a visit back to the States after moving to South Africa. My dad and I had gone for breakfast at IHOP. A single mother and her child were seated near us. The child desperately needed the bathroom and the mom asking her to hold it as there wasn't going to be anyone at the table and the waiter might try to take their plates.

The child couldn’t wait.

So, the mom got up and took her.

When the waiter came, he started clearing their table. And I interjected, “No, no, they’re still eating. They just went to the bathroom.”

My dad looked at me and said, “Why are you interfering?”

Interfering.

That word stayed with me.

Because to me, I wasn’t interfering - I was filling a gap.

She wasn’t there to speak for herself, and it cost me nothing to be her support even for a moment.

That moment revealed something I've been grappling with recently: how uncomfortable some cultures are with stepping into the space between strangers.

On the first episode of the show “Million Dollar Secret”, the first challenge was that a contestant had to hug everyone in the villa without raising alarms. She was spiraling. People thought she was strange, she spent an incredible amount of time conceptualising a plan on how to hug.

And my first thought was: why not just greet them?

Where I come from, greeting includes touch. A hug, maybe a cheek kiss, you might ask “a handshake or a hug” in certain contexts but truthfully, it isn't that deep. A hug isn’t a strategy. It’s normal.

Unfortunately that was about as far as I could get with the show, but that’s when it clicked.

We’ve reduced sustainability to the environment.

We’ve reduced it to carbon metrics and climate targets.

I’m not dismissing climate change… But for most people on this planet, the polar ice caps melting and ozone layer thinning isn’t an emergency.

The emergency is:

Where will I sleep tonight?

What will I feed my children?

Will someone help me if I step away from the table?

You cannot care about turtles if you cannot care for yourself.

That’s hierarchy. That’s human.

Climate collapse is not separate from community collapse, it comes from the same root.

Extraction. Efficiency over empathy. Expansion over enough.

When we stop caring about whether people have enough, we start cutting down forests. When we stop caring about whether workers are safe, we start poisoning rivers. When we stop caring about community, we industrialise everything; including relationships.

Then sharing tea becomes suspicious.

Kindness becomes interference.

Hugging becomes weird.

Connection becomes a liability.

But here (on this continent) even when it’s rare, the conditions for connection still exist.

A woman can turn around and ask another table what they’re drinking.

A child can taste a stranger’s tea.

A person can step in without being accused of overstepping.

And that softness?

That’s sustainability too.

Because sustainability isn’t just about what we conserve.

It’s about what we protect.

And if we don’t protect connection, everything else collapses.