Our country is reeling from recent assaults on our grand democratic experiment. There are moments when I have wondered if the foundations that the founders established would withstand the full on assault on the things that we hold most dear. The principles of justice, equality, fairness…and that difficult to quantify sense that we are about something more than personal self-interest and division.
We have weathered storms before, though perhaps rarely storms of this intensity and duration. I still believe that, as Camus mused, there is more in humankind to be admired than despised. There have been days, of late, when it felt a bit like a dead heat.
The challenges that have faced us come in a time of global pandemic, when so many families in American and across the globe have grieved the loss of loved ones. The challenges come on the heels of the incomprehensible and horrific deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery. Even as we condemned racism and the decades of oppression that prefaced these horrific events, it has become clear that there is a pervasive thread that runs through our shared history that emerges from a legacy of racism and injustice that permeates our history. It was a history all to easy for political actors to whip up into a frenzy that caused contemplative and justice-minded people across the county and world to watch in shock as it tore at te very fabric of democracy.
I write about leadership and art. And so I found myself looking for the meaning in these events that brought these tragedies into some kind of focus. Do creativity and humble leadership offer any solutions to the wounds inflicted by the horrific events that our nation has experience? I believe — perhaps because I need to — that they do so in profound ways. Both the spirit of creativity and the soul of humble leadership come from a source of empathy and understanding others’ plights. To understand another and to begin to imagine things differently asks us to summon the best of ourselves. It asks us to summon our better angels.
So how do we bring our best imagination, creativity, empathy and humility to bear in times of crisis? I find wisdom in looking to models in such times. On March 4th, 1861, President Lincoln delivered his first inaugural address:
"Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
Lincoln, on the verge of civil war, urged us to summon the best of ourselves. His words are ffitting reminder of what binds us still today and that arc of history that, while long, bends toward justice. We all have a role to play in doing our own parts in moving our own corner of the world along that arc to ensure that the world we leave our children is better, more just, and kind. It asks us all to commit to engage in our own sphere of influence with humility, creativity, and courage.
Our better angels are calling us now.