We Need You Now More Than Ever
November 9, 2016;)
We need your effort and passion now more than ever.Last night after learning the likely election results, I fell back to sleep and had a snippet of a dream. In it, I took a step out of my house onto a concrete step, and the ground below — the soil, the rocks, the very foundation — was gone. It had eroded.
That’s how it feels for some individuals. It’s unsettling to imagine that the entryway to the outer world from our homes — literal or symbolical — is eroded.
Whether positive or unimaginable change is ahead, we don’t know. But there are two things I know to be true.
1. First, our world is a complex system. Some parts of that system change rapidly — like fashion and popular culture — and some parts, like governance, change more slowly. Some parts of that system are moving forward, some backwards.
Systems have many levers and variables, and parts of our culture — like the economy, like the democratic experiment that is the United States’ Constitution — have checks and balances.
And that’s where you come in.
2.The other truth I believe is that we each can make an enormous difference. We clearly cannot control everything. But we can do our part to exert pressure on the levers in the system where we do have control so that we can have influence.
If you work for or serve a mission-driven organization — a nonprofit, an association, or a purpose-driven company — we have work to do. The world — your world — needs you now more than ever.
Take time to process the last 24 hours, the last 2 years of campaigning. Then find the resolve to focus on what you are passionate about. Whether it’s the environment and climate change, equity, diversity, civil rights, education, science literacy, immigration, art & culture, healthcare advances — whatever it is — this is your moment to do it with commitment.
Take a look at what the election tells us. Are there new audiences you can serve? Pain you can relieve? Disenfranchised you can reconnect?
If it feels like the foundation of your front step to the world eroded, build it back up with the soil of your effort. Then lay the next stepping stone. And the next. And the next. And don’t stop until the work is done.
Reader Comments (2)
Thanks for the inspiration! We are all in this America together but taking care to work in areas of need is an individual choice!
We must overcome!
Thanks for your comment, Ellen. I agree. We have new work ahead.