Reflections of Our CEO: The Audacity of Compassion

I’m sitting to write this in the safe warmth of my living room, framing up a Reflection that began to form earlier today when I was out for a long, slow, solo ride on my mountain bike. While an audiobook played through my headphones, I let the pedals and my mind spin at the same leisurely pace….

Remembrance, from the latin memor, meaning mindful and later, rememorari, meaning call to mind. This is more than mere recall or momentary acknowledgement. It’s an invitation to bring the past to mind, to reflect on it, to think about it.

An early draft of this post descended into anger. I wrote about Putin and Ukraine, Gaza and the Dahiya doctrine, Donald Trump and polarization in America. It was mildly cathartic, but ultimately unfruitful. It felt neither mindful nor constructive. It was not what I wanted to share, nor did it feel at all like the me I want to be.

Today is Remembrance Day. For me, November 11 is always a profound moment in the annual calendar. In many countries, it’s a statutory or bank holiday on which we remember those who served and gave their lives in armed conflicts. Whether we mark the day merely with the wearing of a poppy or attendance at a commemoration ceremony, most of us know the symbolism of the moment of silence ‘at the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month.’ The moment that marked the end of hostilities after World War I. The end of hostilities.

“Hate Cannot Drive Out Hate….”

I could talk about each of those topics or all of them, or the dozens more that might ignite my rage. But as I spun my pedals through the dripping rainforest this morning, cool, pungent air filling my lungs, I was reminded of Dr King’s admonition: “Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.”

Can we extend our empathy to those with whom we wholly, even violently disagree?

What does it mean to ‘love our enemy?’ So many wisdom and faith traditions warn us of the perils of hate. Its momentary catharsis can blind us to the possibility of change, and prevent us from ‘seeking first to understand.’ Or put in contemporary parlance, it drives ‘othering’—setting up an ‘us vs them’ dynamic that can perpetuate interminably.

I wonder if it’s too easy to fall into hate of characters like Putin or Netanyahu or Trump? I pick these three, because they were all atop my news feed this morning. I say ‘characters’ because few of us actually know them. We know the profile painted for us by media intermediaries, some of whom are responsible and respectable, others of whom are purveyors of ‘clickbait’ and misinformation. Of course, we know these men by their actions, but compassion invites us to know them by their intentions, their motivations. It requires us to muster the empathy to understand. 

What does that question pique in you? Perhaps you find it inane or frustrating. Perhaps you’re rolling your eyes and are tempted to stop reading. Perhaps you know me and feel a sense of pity for my naivete! Or perhaps the very notion of extending compassion delivers an overwhelming weight on your heart….

When is Enough Enough?

There’s a passage in Pema Chodron’s The Places That Scare You in which she describes the shape and reach of true compassion:

Certainly, in so many issues and places, we are past the timely point of saying ‘enough.’ But can our boundary-setting stop short of hate or aversion? Can we resist the temptation to respond to cruelty with cruelty? Can we hold back from the self-righteous condemnation that closes our minds to possibility and leads inevitably to polarization?

In Chodron Buddhist tradition, along with loving-kindness, joy, and equanimity, compassion is one of four limitless qualities that lead us toward “nurturing open-mindedness and courage.” As pundits and insiders unpack the hows and whys of what ails us, I find myself thinking already about antidotes: Curiosity. Compassion. Connection. Community.

As I spun the pedals on my bike this morning, the words of William Ury reminded me of another piece of hard-earned wisdom: It is far, far easier to stop conflict before it begins than to find peace after it breaks out.

We betray our humanity when we give in too readily to our baser instincts. Anger feels powerful—precisely because it is, which brings to mind another quote from Dr King: “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.” Credit to Adam Kahane for asking what might it take to combine them?

As leaders—indeed as citizens and as humans—many of us have power in the form of position or moral authority. Our words and our actions carry weight. We can affect change. But can we do so without at the same time forgetting our innate human capacity for empathy? For compassion? For love?

Audacious? Probably. But in times like these, to be timid is to acquiesce to the very cruelty we seek to avoid in ourselves. And lest we forget, history shows time and again where that path leads.

Let’s Be Audacious, Together…

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