No Lost Cause

Thursday night my daughter Meryl Fé and I watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It had been decades since I watched this Frank Capra classic with Jimmy Stewart. Sometimes we all feel like Jefferson Smith, facing the seemingly insurmountable sustained by our sense of purpose, principles, and passion, and will power. As he says towards the end “… and you know you fight for the lost causes even harder than for any others. You even die for them.”

At his commencement address this week at University of Portland Paul Hawken observed… “When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.”

My experience is very much like Paul’s; everyday I meet, hear about, and communicate with countless people who are working for the lost causes and, by virtue of their work, the causes are far from lost. I recall an article I read in the CoEvolutionary Quarterly in the early 80s by Paul, in which he calls human creativity the most powerful anti-entropy agent in the universe. We can create order, beauty, reason, peace, where there is chaos, decay, and irrational violence, by the purposeful engagement of our hearts, minds, and bodies – envisioning a new reality and a path to manifesting it, bringing our intention into action, to pursue the path, and creatively evolving our generative process to reflect new information and circumstances. This is what we evoke with Working for Good.

And like Jefferson Smith, as much as we emphasize the object of our attention, we focus on the process by which we engage in our pursuit. There’s only one rule, he proclaims to the congregation of Senators and bystanders “love thy neighbor….”

How we pursue our causes is as, if not more, important that what we pursue. The process is the product!

Wishing all a happy Memorial Day weekend; ideally filled with time with loved ones, and time for yourself–to rest, reflect, and rejuvenate.

Yours in Working for Good,

Jeff