So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Adieu: Goodbye SF!

Go to the People;
Live among them;
Love them;
Learn from them;
Start from where they are;
Work with them;
Build on what they have.
But of the best leaders,
When the task is accomplished,
The work completed,
The people all remark:
“We have done it ourselves.”

–Lao Tzu

Today I say goodbye to Sustainable Flatbush, and to all of you, dear readers. Thank you all for coming to the events, for participating and engaging with each other and for supporting Sustainable Flatbush.

Dassa at Brooklyn College Earth Day (photo by Keka Marzagão)

And to the SF-ers: Anne, Keka, Jocelyn Cohen, Chris, and Mela (and Madeline & Maikel, honorary SF-ers and true gardeners). Thank you for opening your organization and your hearts to students like me. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to contribute something — something small, to be sure, but something at least — to the sustainability movement to which you are all devoted.

I wanted my last post to be about what I learned, but how can I encapsulate an entire semester in a single blog post? So instead I found a poem to express the thoughts for which I don’t have adequate words. Lao Tzu’s poem, above, captures what I have discovered over the past semester while working alongside the wonderful folks at SF: That giving to the community is not about passing down wisdom from up above; it’s about supporting people and giving them the opportunity to learn. And SF has given so many people — has given me — the opportunity to learn. For that, I will always be grateful.

So goodbye everyone, and here’s to many more years, and many more events, of giving others the chance to learn something new. What can be better than that?



Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *