Dear friends,
In Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life, the late Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh wrote about the purpose of hope:
“Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”
I come back to this teaching often when faced with the difficulties of life: suffering, violence, or grief within and beyond myself. I am reminded that, for today, we have the capacity—even when it feels beyond our limits—to help carry the weight of our shared sorrow, to transform compassion into collective action, and to dare to hope for a better future.
I believe that in moments of crisis, when we reach out to the people we love and the people we don’t yet know—just to make space to fully see one another and feel connected—we realize that our humanity is bound up with theirs, and that hope is on the horizon. We thrive as individuals and as a society when we recognize that we exist in mutuality.
As I reflect on our work at Einhorn Collaborative, I arrive at this question time and again: can we truly find ways to bridge what divides us amid the many converging and exasperating conflicts in our country? In searching for answers, we recognize that our differences, as vast as they may be, are what we need to gain perspective in order to solve societal challenges, big and small. We also recognize that, in the face of historical and current forms of dehumanization, practicing belonging and sitting alongside people with whom we disagree may be painful or feel inconsequential. But there are no easy ways to heal our deep-rooted divisions. A way forward beckons us to take on the life-long work of engaging with others and “expanding our circle of human concern.” Our fates are intertwined, and that’s a reason to fully embrace the power of a hopeful tomorrow.
I want to share with you some places that are giving me hope. Over the past year, we’ve further refined our strategy to support Gen Z in becoming the next generation of “bridgers,” people who have the motivation, mindset, and skills to help us navigate divides so all of us can work better together. Young people are ripe and ready to address our nation’s most pressing problems today and tomorrow, especially if we give them the opportunity to take on the challenge. We are also bringing the bridging mindset to our work with peers across philanthropy in an effort to build a culture of pluralism in America. The work of New Pluralists and its new effort to support community healing give me hope. This same bridging is brought into our work to advance early relational health in pediatrics; parent leaders are sitting at the table to codesign the pediatric experience to better support early relational health in the first months of a child's life. This collaborative, systems-change model gives me a whole lot of hope.
In this newsletter, we’ve curated a list of resources to help you become a bridger yourself: how to navigate difficult conversations, listen deeply to people we may disagree with, and make decisions without relying on biases. And for many of us working in philanthropy, we offer an op-ed by our friend Suzette Brooks Masters on how funders contribute to toxic polarization and the shifts we can make to foster social cohesion. Lastly, I want to introduce you to the newest member of the Einhorn Collaborative Team, our new Communications Lead, Chi Nguyen. You will hear more from her in the future. In the meantime, I invite you to get to know her Through the Prism.
As we continue to reach across the differences that make us human, I invite you to join me in practicing the art of “finding shared purpose.” Whether it’s in the process of creating collective action to make a difference in our community or connecting with someone we just met, may we find the patience to ease into goodwill, the kindness to listen with compassion, and the courage to expand our worldviews as we discover what we share in common. When we are willing to take the time to shift how we see one another, hope is not only possible but transformational in how we can heal ourselves and the world around us.
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