Debbie Millman has an ongoing project at PRINT titled “What Matters.” This is an effort to understand the interior life of artists, designers, and creative thinkers. This facet of the project is a request of each invited respondent to answer ten identical questions and submit a nonprofessional photograph.
Dr. Pardis Shafafi is a British Iranian anthropologist and Global Responsible Business Lead at Designit. With over 15 years of cross-sectoral experience ranging from scrubbing into clinical care and managing humanitarian programmes in active war zones, Dr. Shafafi comes at creativity from a unique perspective. Concerned with the ripple effect of creative decisions in everyday life, Dr. Shafafi champions a framework called Do No Harm, which acknowledges the ability creatives have to shape the world around us and looks to impart responsibility on the field akin to the Hippocratic Oath.
What is the thing you like doing most in the world?
Waking up without an alarm clock prompt on a Saturday and rolling into a long, luxurious strong, coffee paired breakfast with my family.
What is the first memory you have of being creative?
I remember being very keen to learn to tie my own shoelaces and to hold a pen and write. Being the youngest in the household made me feel like I was always behind, and these two skills represented something important that I needed to unlock.
At some point I decided that my parents and older brother were simply too slow in teaching me and I have a distinct memory of sitting indoors with a shoe on while everyone milled around me and coming up with my own way of tying a little double looped knot and of holding my pen steady in my hand to write. Years later I noticed that my methodology for both processes was starkly different to others, but the outcome is largely the same (except maybe that I get a little sore from holding the pen between the third and fourth finger, but that was a small price to pay for starting early with the writing).
What is your biggest regret?
I feel that I could and should have been more present and maybe even reckless as a teenager. Sometimes I think I missed the experience of being, fifteen or eighteen, and unsure but still defiantly participating in the world beyond the educational institutions that held me and my time. It’s something I think about more as I get older.
How have you gotten over heartbreak?
With extensive retroactive analysis and eventually, acceptance. It helps to be in a very content life phase now because you can weave a convenient narrative of cumulative life events (including the less enjoyable bits) which led you to your current state.
What makes you cry?
The state of the world, the political dynamics which govern us versus the stories we are told about how things work.
How long does the pride and joy of accomplishing something last for you?
Until the next challenge comes up, sadly. Although as an anthropologist I’m highly critical of any sentence starting with ‘it’s human nature to…’, I do think that we are trained to focus more on critical and negative emotional states then the moments of validation and positive affirmation that come with accomplishing things. This can feel lopsided in life and often does get translated into a skewed narrative of more failures than successes.
Do you believe in an afterlife, and if so, what does that look like to you?
I believe in an afterlife in an abstract way, which is not to say I’m belittling it at all. I think our energies and imprints live beyond us and that this means a capacity to exist in the world through moments, feelings and the reflections of others–less as ghostly apparitions and more as post life manifestings from those who live on beyond us.
I’m lucky enough to come from an academic discipline that values and explores a breadth of ideas about life after death across history and geographies. It humbles me to acknowledge just how much we as human beings have invested in the creative premise of imagining ‘the beyond’ in our lowest moments. It connects me to legions of people before and after me who are driven by the same feelings- feelings of love and loss. If I’m honest, it’s this connection that continues to inspire me to keep an open mind and heart to otherworldly possibilities, and I try to use that feeling to drive my curiosity and engagement with the world even in the darkest chapters of climate emergency, conflict, and continued inequity.
What do you hate most about yourself?
Losing myself in connections and patterns which take me away from slow burning, deep dives and favor broader engagements across multiple realms.
What do you love most about yourself?
Again, losing myself in connections and patterns which take me away from slow burning, deep dives and favor broader engagements across multiple realms.
What is your absolute favorite meal?
Less a meal and more a style of eating, I like things stuffed with other things and I love canapes. So, in an ideal world, it would be me versus an endless selection of tiny stuffed things: dumplings, samosas, pupusas, empanadas, filled doughnuts, mini pies…you name it and put it on a canape tray, hand me a glass of something and I’m having a great time, every time.