As a child, you respond physically, tactically. You're delighted by sound, you're delighted by recognizing something. It's like hide and seek. Is it there? Is it not there? Is it this note? Is it not this note? It's one fantastic game.
Yo-Yo MaRead
It's easy for me to care about Toronto, because Toronto is a community that cares about itself. It represents the world. It talks to itself, and because it does, it figures out that there must be a music garden as part of its existence.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the importance of community and self-care in fostering a supportive environment.
Yo-Yo Ma emphasizes the interconnection between individuals within a community, suggesting that a community that truly cares for itself can thrive and nurture important elements of its existence, such as cultural and artistic expressions. The reference to a 'music garden' symbolizes the creativity and harmony that can arise when people engage deeply with their surroundings and each other.
In practice
During a speech about community initiatives, this quote could be used to emphasize the importance of local engagement.
As a child, you respond physically, tactically. You're delighted by sound, you're delighted by recognizing something. It's like hide and seek. Is it there? Is it not there? Is it this note? Is it not this note? It's one fantastic game.
There's a part of me that's always charging ahead. I'm the curious kid, always going to the edge.
I think that peace is, in many ways, a precondition of joy.
I think anybody who goes away finds you appreciate home more when you return.
When we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding of our own lives.
I learn something not because I have to, but because I really want to. That's the same view I have for performing. I'm performing because I really want to, not because I have to bring bread back home.
Shallow communities are relatively easy to build.
Our true destiny...is a world built from the bottom up by competent citizens living in solid communities, engaged in and by their places.
I think when you've travelled around a lot in Africa, you understand something that many people here don't recognize: the extraordinary power that is Africa at village level - at community level.
Neighborhoods and communities are complex organisms that will be resilient only if they are healthy along a number of interrelated dimensions, much as a human body cannot be healthy without adequate air, water, rest, and food.
If you and your church were to disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow, would anyone in the community around you notice you were gone? And if the community did even notice would they say 'we are really glad they are gone', or 'we are really going to miss them'?
Citizen service is the very American idea that we meet our challenges not as isolated individuals but as members of a true community, with all of us working together. Our mission is nothing less than to spark a renewed sense of obligation, a new sense of duty, a new season of service.
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