Why Did I Write this Book? Part I
“I will get things done for America, to make our people safer, smarter, and healthier…”
This is the first line of the AmeriCorps Pledge that I took more than 15 years ago, and I still remember it to this day. As I reflect on the journey that led me to write my upcoming book, Empathy for Change: How to Create a More Understanding World, I’m reminded of this pledge and the quote that convinced me to join AmeriCorps in the first place:
You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.
I first heard it in 2006 when my mentor used it to motivate me to leave my consulting job behind and to step into empathy and lead change in AmeriCorps to rebuild the Gulf Coast after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. It has followed me throughout my life: to create a rebuilding project to build 50 homes in four months in AmeriCorps, to serve as a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow between two Administrations, and to step further into my role as a change leader.
This quote appears in the Prologue of the book, where I break it down in today’s terms. For us to live with a finer spirit of hope and achievement, we must first sense what the world needs and what we can do to that end, and act upon it. This quote shows we need to have an awareness that we aren’t the center of our universe, and that by helping and being in community with other people we can lift others up in the process. And lastly, we’re not meant to sit idly by and let things happen to us. We must actively participate in our own way to shape the world to be greater, and in the end we’ll be better off ourselves.
Enabling the World to Live More Amply
As we have gone deeper into the 21st century, I see that we’re moving away from making people safer, smarter, and healthier, especially as we combat a global pandemic and white supremacy. I believe a lack of empathy is to blame, but is also the key to help us turn the tide and seed new growth.
I’m reminded of the part of Michelle Obama’s Democratic National Convention speech, which does an excellent job of describing where we are:
Empathy: that’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. The ability to walk in someone else’s shoes; the recognition that someone else’s experience has value, too. Most of us practice this without a second thought. If we see someone suffering or struggling, we don’t stand in judgment. We reach out because, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” It is not a hard concept to grasp. It’s what we teach our children…right now, kids in this country are seeing what happens when we stop requiring empathy of one another. They’re looking around wondering if we’ve been lying to them this whole time about who we are and what we truly value.
They see people shouting in grocery stores, unwilling to wear a mask to keep us all safe. They see people calling the police on folks minding their own business just because of the color of their skin. They see an entitlement that says only certain people belong here, that greed is good, and winning is everything because as long as you come out on top, it doesn’t matter what happens to everyone else. And they see what happens when that lack of empathy is ginned up into outright disdain.
They see our leaders labeling fellow citizens enemies of the state while emboldening torch-bearing white supremacists. They watch in horror as children are torn from their families and thrown into cages, and pepper spray and rubber bullets are used on peaceful protestors for a photo-op.
Obama ends this section with the sentence: “it’s downright infuriating, because I know the goodness and the grace that is out there in households and neighborhoods all across this nation.”
Go With Goodness and Grace
Before she even said this speech, I deeply understood that there is goodness and grace in all of us, but somehow we’re not showing it: that we have empathy for one another. Somewhere along the line, our environment and our choices have made us swing in the wrong direction. Some have it, and others do not.
In this book I’m pulling on this string — to see why we do or don’t have empathy. I explore what it might take to achieve greater empathy and a renewed sense of hope, talking to dozens of experts who are blazing the path for a more connected and equitable world. I’m also sprinkling in a few frameworks that I’ve devised from my work/research that will lead to more functional, empathetic systems around us. This is the work that leads to real, systemic change that we need today.
About This Article Series
Throughout the month of January and beyond, I’ll post various articles as I inch closer to the launch of Empathy for Change on January 25, 2021. Each week I’ll focus on a different theme from the book, featuring topics in the book and people that I’ve talked to.
The first week of the year is about my “why” why did I spend more than a year navel gazing and talking to other change makers? What led me to make this decision?
Thanks for reading and joining me for this journey!
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