How are you, dear reader?
No, I mean it: how are you? How are you holding up in this hideous moment?
You’ve probably heard the widely misattributed inspirational aphorism, variously, “Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” or “Be kind. Everyone you meet is carrying a heavy burden.”
Are you finding kindness to ease your fight and your burden? Are you able to spare any kindness? Or does the saying just feel like a vapid self-improvement slogan?
The source quote appears to have been penned by Ian MacLaren (aka Rev. John Watson), and dates to the dawn of the 20th century:
“This man beside us also has a hard fight with an unfavouring world, with strong temptations, with doubts and fears, with wounds of the past which have skinned over, but which smart when they are touched. It is a fact, however surprising. And when this occurs to us we are moved to deal kindly with him, to bid him be of good cheer, to let him understand that we are also fighting a battle; we are bound not to irritate him, nor press hardly upon him nor help his lower self.”
Setting aside the gender prescriptive man in favor of the more hospitable person, and recognizing that this advice applies to ourselves as well, it remains timely and challenging over a century after its writing, and is every whit as applicable in the impact investing sectors as anywhere else in human experience.
I’m particularly struck by the tension in this invitation to grace: we are bid to deal kindly with everyone — ourselves included — who is suffering, by
- understanding our common suffering
- not adding to that suffering
- bidding good cheer
That last instruction could be breezily interpreted along the lines of urging someone to cheer up, or to put on a happy face. I don’t think that’s what Rev. Watson meant. After all, failing or refusing to acknowledge or relate to suffering only serves to further exacerbate that suffering. Telling someone who is experiencing grief or despair or depression or any other trauma, “cheer up!” is devoid of kindness or compassion or empathy — not to mention denying the unrelenting glut of brutality, corruption, and ruin which kindles heartsickness in anyone who is paying attention to current events.
You want me to do what?
By the same token, no one who is rocked hard by global, local, and personal traumas, literal and figurative violence, existential horror, rage and despair over self-serving indifference, needs anyone else to tell them that they are in a hard fight — that much is inescapably and viscerally self-evident. The anthropocene world — especially the financial world — is aggressively and cruelly unfavouring to the overwhelming majority of living beings, human and otherwise. I hope you are finding ways to deal kindly with yourself, starting by acknowledging the enormity of the battle and the tenderness of your own past and present wounds, doubts, and fears.
Taking Rev. Watson’s next step, I encourage you to feel the human and non-human life around you and notice their suffering as well. Not to weigh your suffering against anyone else’s, or overwhelm your capacity for compassion, or compare coping mechanisms, but to realize that you are far from alone. I hope you are finding ways to experience community and solidarity, thwarting the unfavouring human world’s attempts to compound your suffering by further dividing and isolating you from those peers and fellow change makers with whom you have every right to seek shared consolation. As Mother Teresa counseled, we belong to each other.
I don’t mind confessing to you that after decades of spiritual practice and seeking I struggle with these first two steps. I am far from mastery of either, but still working to follow along behind Mary Oliver and others who have left breadcrumb trails (if you are more advanced, please share!). Nevertheless, or perhaps therefore, I find myself clinging to the third step: finding every possibility I can to celebrate in spite of all the horror.
“What’s so important? What you got here that’s worth living for?” — Miracle Max, The Princess Bride
Compassion and celebration may seem inappropriate here at the end of all things, and may feel downright impossible. But along with singing the blues, they give us a means to reclaim and honor what we know to be good and just and vital.
No stranger to horror, Thich Nhat Hanh taught, “Find joy and peace in this very moment.”
Continuing that thought, Brother David Steindl-Rast offers guidance on how to locate joy and peace regardless of the moment:
“Joy is that extraordinary happiness that is independent of what happens to us. Good luck can make us happy, but it cannot give us lasting joy. The root of joy is gratefulness…It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.”
And then of course there is the immortal Lucille Clifton:
won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
What does this have to do with impact investing?
I am profoundly grateful for and to the many people and organizations working to utilize the tools of finance to undo the grievous harms the financial world has wrought and the devastation it perpetuates.
Since you’re reading this, that gratitude likely includes you.
Some of the people and organizations for whom I am grateful I am also fortunate to know well; others I know only by reputation; many more I have never heard of and may never encounter. All the more reason to take every opportunity — this very moment — to celebrate all those who are repurposing capital systems to do good; modeling grace and compassion in reframing investment practices; ameliorating harm and creating real, positive impact through philanthropic and return-generating instruments; finding and sharing joy in the work of transforming unjust financial structures into networks of mutuality, reparation, and regeneration.
It’s tempting to try to recite them all here, but that would accomplish little before gathering digital dust. We list some few on the Reinventure website, under Connect with peers and allies and Channel capital. Both are at best fragmentary samplings of a wide, ingenious, prolific community, and long overdue for update. In conjunction with this post, thanks to prompting from Tuti Scott, one of my admired colleagues, I’m trying something different: I’ve started a celebration thread on LinkedIn. With your assistance, I will attempt to expand and refresh that honor roll periodically to give it wider continuation, to spread the cheer.
“Courage, dear heart” — C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
How are you faring with your battle? Where do you find kindness, community and solidarity? What and whom do you celebrate? Please share or add comments to the celebration thread, and please add many names from your own network.
Better yet, as Congressman John Lewis was fond of saying, when you pray, move your feet: please take every opportunity to strengthen those existing connections and cultivate new collaborations. And please (continue to) do everything in your power to shift capital away from the extractive, abusive, destructive winner-take-all status quo, toward peace and justice, equity and prosperity, healing and vitality.
The Reinventure Capital team is contributing our part to help knit together just and vibrant new financial ecosystems by investing exclusively in US-based companies led and controlled by BIPOC and/or female founders at breakeven and poised to grow profitably, and working with those founder teams to grow their companies into positively impactful economic engines that generate wealth and opportunity. We are proud to be in their company and in yours.
The investing world is unfavouring, but it does not have to be so; nor is it immutable or unalterable. So let us care for each other as we change it together.
Are you seeking comrades-in-arms and confidants with whom to exercise kindness as we persist in replacing structural injustice with systemic dignity? Please contact us to discover how we might support and amplify each other. Could we collaborate in investing for equitable, sustainable, and prosperous outcomes? Please contact us to explore how we might join forces. And please share how you are creating impact worth celebrating, so we and others can cheer and be cheered by your example!
“And if it’s true we are alone, we are alone together, the way blades of grass are alone, but exist as a field.” — Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
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Image credit Vonecia Carswell / Unsplash
*While there’s no such thing as a guarantee in investing and no one can reliably predict the future, Ed’s prior track record delivering 32% IRR to investors provides direct evidence that it is indeed possible to consistently invest for both financial returns and system change. If you are an accredited investor and would like to learn more about investments that can advance social, racial, and gender equity by supporting high-value companies led by people of color and/or women, please contact us to start that conversation.
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