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Felix Porsche leaned in, elbows on knees, as I opened the panel with a question for him.
“Where I grew up in the northeastern US," I said, "the original inhabitants, the Iroquois people, believed that you must make your decisions on behalf of not just yourself, your family or your generation, but on behalf of the seven generations to come, so they may enjoy what you have today."
The room of 60 went pin-drop silent.
"What is your role in stewarding the Earth for the next seven generations?” I asked Felix.
He leaned back in his chair, kicked out a foot, and ran his hands over his forehead and through his hair. He paused.
A young Austrian investor in sustainable transportation and descendent of the eponymous car inventor, Felix was part of a last-minute panel I had the opportunity to organize in Vienna a year ago, which also included business leaders and investors, Kimiko Uriu and Michael Sarsteiner.
"What is your role in stewarding the Earth for the next seven generations?”
Looking past me and through the windows, Felix blinked, hard.
Then, he looked straight at me. “I don’t know yet," he said. "But I am going to be thinking about it.”
My part of this interaction was born when a finger injury caused me to pivot from a climbing trip to a LEVEL C Brand Architecture course in Austria. There, a teamwork dynamic I wasn't able to navigate catalyzed a second pivot from the course's original assignment to pitch a model to revitalize the nonprofit Energy Globe Award. Instead, I found myself with five minutes to hit home the teams' pitches. As Andy Starr, the man behind the Level C mayhem, called it, I was "batting cleanup."
It was this provocation from Andy that spurred my approach: "Make them think differently."
In the year since, I’ve turned over Felix’s answer together with Andy’s challenge, melding them in my mind.
I now find it’s ME who’s thinking differently.
As in these black-and-white photos from the event, flashes of movement and memories fly past in my mind as I write, each a connection in my heart with the brilliant souls I met from around the world over those three days. And the hard things, too.
“Make them think differently.”
Looking back, I could choose to frame this story a hundred different ways. Here's how I'm choosing to think about it today:
❔ I see that questions aren’t necessarily most valuable for the immediate answers they beg.
👐 I see that an inquiry can be an opening.
🌁 And I see that I want to be intentional about how and when I prompt someone to shift their thinking—and when to accept such an invitation myself.
After I shared this story, Felix told me that the question kept him thinking, because he thinks most of what he can actively do won’t matter in seven generations.
At the same time, he said, "I think that even small actions accumulated over time, and when adopted by many, can create lasting change. Therefore, I will go with being mindful also in the small actions myself and, more importantly, raising children to be mindful, empathetic, and environmentally conscious, which they can pass on to future generations."
What we do most certainly matters for our many-great-grandchildren, and it's up to us to decide, in every moment, what the effect will be.
"I will go with ... raising children to be mindful, empathetic, and environmentally conscious which they can pass on to future generations."
