At your best

At your best, you choose love.

You feel fear
Or anxiety
Or selfishness
Or anger
Or hate
But you choose love.

You choose love
Because you’ve chosen fear and anxiety before
And it paralyzed you.

You choose love
Because you’ve chosen selfishness before
And it isolated you.

You choose love
Because you’ve chosen anger and hate before
And it poisoned you.

Your eyes are wide open.
You know that choosing love
In a look-out-for-number-one world isn’t easy.
It exposes you.

But you do it because
When you look into the eyes of your family
Your friends
Your colleagues
Your neighbors
You see yourself.
When you look into the eyes of people across the world
You see yourself.
And even
In your clearest moments
When you look into the eyes of your enemies
You see yourself.
You might not see yourself in their behavior
But
You see yourself in their struggle.
You see yourself in their humanity.
It’s jarring
And it opens your heart.

In your moments of clarity
You realize that our most intractable global challenges
Are rooted in the simplest of indecencies:
The failure to see humanity in each other.

You’re not sure how you’re going to make a difference
But you know it starts with your heart.
So, you choose love.

At your best, you find courage.

You know, unmistakably, that our current moment requires guts.
You know that ideologies are easy, but pragmatic solutions are tough.
You know that power has a vested interest in selling oversimplified narratives for expedient purposes.
And that year-after-year this sell-job has a cumulatively pernicious effect.

But you don’t let resignation take hold.
Which is to say
You wake up each day and find the courage to see possibility and hope.
To see light pushing through darkness.
To see pockets of beauty everywhere.
And you feel a commitment
To expanding them
Swell inside you.

Before long
Roads
That once seemed
Too challenging
Too frightening
Too daunting
Become inevitable journeys.

You know the courage required on the road ahead will take many forms.
Sometimes standing up
Sometimes standing aside
Sometimes fighting
Sometimes forgiving
Sometimes holding on
Sometimes letting go
Always listening.

Never easy
Yet

You put one foot
In front of the other
And start moving.

At your best, you see humor.

You’ll feel
Joy and sadness
Hope and resignation
Confidence and doubt
Acceptance and rejection
Ease and adversity
Comfort and grief.

With luck, you’ll feel more of the good than the bad.
But being human you’ll feel all of it.
An irony of life is that
The tougher it is for you to roll with punches
The more of them you’ll get.
To live life is to feel grief.
To try to avoid it is to invite more of it.

So
Dream big dreams
Make big plans
Open your mind
Open your heart
Pursue with courageous conviction.

And also
Lighten up along the way.

Life will
Pinch you
Poke you
Punch you
And kick you in the teeth.
Find the humor in it.
Nobody is getting out alive
Or without scars.

At your best, you inspire.

Inspiration doesn’t come through fancy words or big ideas.
It comes through your actions, every day.

Amidst fear, selfishness, and hate
People see you choosing love.

Up against difficult odds
People see you finding courage.

Feeling the heaviness of life
People see you smiling and laughing.

You inspire when you shine a light,
Allowing others to do the same.

This is true leadership.
The most important work in the world.