SHOWTIME SAYS…
For those that celebrate Kwanzaa or want to learn more about observing the holiday, here is some information about today’s principle which is Ujima.
UJIMA (00-GEE-MA) COLLECTIVE WORK AND RESPONSIBILITY: To build and maintain our community together and make our sister’s and brother’s problems our problems and solve them together.
The third principle encourages self-criticism and personal evaluation, as it relates to the common good of the family/community. Without collective work and struggle, progress is impossible. The family and the community must accept the reality that we are collectively responsible for our failures, as well as our victories and achievements. Discussions concerning each family member’s responsibility prove helpful in defining and achieving family goals.
Explanation
The Ujima principle teaches each family member to recognize that their own well-being is derived from their family’s and community’s well being and that they must be concern with the overall health of their family and community; and that the lives of each family member and that of the community are bound together, and that the success of any one their lives is an aspect of and dependent on the goodness and health of the community as a whole; and that finally, there can be no private accounting of the success or failure of their individual lives one by one. The community and the families which make up the community are responsible for the success and failure of the community in its totality.
