We all want the same things and we are all terrified of failure

A short meditation on imperfect unions

Give me an example of a time when social progress was achieved entirely outside established systems of governance.

Name an innovator or hero who never had an opinion or made a choice that was incongruous and counterproductive to their life’s work.

Name a successful agent of change that never compromised or negotiated with opposing parties in order to achieve their goals.

Name someone you have personally known who you believe is truly evil and incapable of redemption.

Raise your hand if you’ve never made a terrible mistake out of blindness, ignorance, or sheer wrongheaded thinking. Raise it again if you’re the same person with the exact same perspective today that you had 20 years ago. Or five years ago. Or last year.

Stand up if you haven’t spent most of your life making whatever choices seemed best at the time. Stand up if you’ve never been faced with an important decision and no good options.

Stand up if you’ve never struggled for understanding or acted out of fear or anger.

Stand up if you’ve never recognized your own flaws and failures in another person and felt a connection to them for even a brief moment.

Stand up if, underneath all your fights and failures, your passions and pains, what you really want is a world that is less happy, less healthy, less prosperous and less peaceful.