海角大神

I鈥檝e spoken to Monitor reader Sam Daley-Harris in this space before. He is determined to change the way we change the world. We can do advocacy better, he insists.

Recently, he shared he wrote for The Fulcrum, and I had to share some of it here. He writes of Eva Cassidy, the singer who died of cancer in her 30s. Not long before her death, she took to the stage at a benefit concert to sing one song:

鈥淚magine,鈥� Sam writes. 鈥淚nstead of focusing on pain, suffering, debt or despair, she sang 鈥榃hat a Wonderful World鈥� surrounded by her community of friends and supporters. What if our politics came from a similar place of grace? What if our activism sprang from such gratitude?鈥�

His answer: 鈥淚t could.鈥� We need to learn not to give up in 鈥渄iscouragement and despair鈥� but to find ways 鈥渢o have breakthroughs and see [ourselves] in a new light.鈥� That is a recipe for transformational advocacy, he says. To me, it sounds simply like transformation, which is perhaps the same thing.