“So, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and hold on to that childlike wonder about what makes the universe exist.” – Stephen Hawking
I’m spending a lot of time these days listening to the anxiety and fear of nonprofits about what does the future hold. How do we make decisions about services that are essential and having conversations where one says, “Well, we all agree on what’s essential.” I then asked my peer what was essential to them, and it wasn’t what I would say was essential. We all need to be asking these questions and many more.
Our tendency as people is to define things in terms of what it is the opposite: peace/war, right/wrong, positive/negative, legal/illegal, approved/rejected. And yet, there’s always so much gray area. Sometimes this defining of things is easier because sometimes we know what’s right and what’s wrong. And I find choosing between right and right far more difficult. Joseph Badaracco Jr. authored a great book many years ago titled, Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose Between Right and Right. It was a business book and is still valuable. I read it first as a young banker and I kept it all these years.
In our friend group, our teammates at work (in the for profit and not-for-profit world), we are all struggling with so many questions. I feel as though this is the first time in my career where there have been so many big questions with so many unknowns. We will get through it, and we will do the work needed to help people in need.
As we do the dance for potential, imagined, feared cutbacks in Federal funding, we’ll all be answering what is essential and what is critical. I hope that we can choose to dream choices of right and right rather than right and wrong. And I hope we do a bit of dreaming of solutions like I believe this community is especially good at.
In fact, in times of difficulty, community always saves us. It always will.
Onward.
