In defense of the heart

I suspect that by most accounts, if you are reading this, you have at some point been considered intelligent. Your brains – they’re working for you. Like many people in our sector, you likely have high regards for “smarts.”

Regardless of how bright you are, I also suspect that your brains are not what first got you interested in “doing good.”

It was your heart.

via GIPHY

It was your heart, that source of love and generosity and compassion. Your heart, where you encounter hope before you encounter certainty. It’s in our hearts that we become first aware that we are capable of taking better care of each other on this planet.

We don’t talk about our hearts nearly enough in this work.

We can’t do this work alone, so we must dwell more often where we are connected to each other. Take climate justice in the face of a warming planet. Change won’t come from the perfect proposal you write, or even the stunning results your organization or even consortium achieves.

It’s so. much. bigger. than. that.

Everything at the root of what we’re up against – severe, entrenched global inequality – is bigger than that. It requires more of our hearts, where we believe in people, in a better future.

Our hearts hold the fuel for imagination. When it’s hard to get our brains around all this brokenness, our hearts know the incalculable sacredness woven within, around, and through our human frailty.

At the end of 2016, my heart was in tatters. So much around us teaches us, encourages us, distracts us from the brokenness. So my brain took over in 2017. I plunged all the way into my work, lest I feel – even for a second – how disappointed I was in broken dreams, trust, promises…life. I led the rebranding of a 30-year-old organization, redid the website, and got a book published. Great moments of triumphs all.

And I didn’t feel any of it.

It took one year to override my over-active head, with its laser focus on achieving and not feeling. When I finally stopped, and allowed healing to arrive, my heart again became the source of joy, virtue, delight, gratitude, purity, strength.

Yes, our hearts get broken every day as we try to make the world a fairer place. Not only do we have to accept the limitations of what we can individually achieve in this rapidly changing swirl of our global lives, we have to cultivate ever-more tolerance for the uncontrollable and surrender to the unknowable – which our reptilian and limbic brains often thwart.

Thoughts can be easily discarded. I’m reminding myself often these days not to believe everything I think. In this supposed post-truth age, we are required to look beyond the face value of what even our closest allies say or share. In the age of information, we are entreated to ask what my friends Katie Petitt and Sierra Ramírez call “second-level questions,” and even third and fourth level. Any smart-y can tell you what you should do. Heart-y will stay with you until you find your own way. (And isn’t that the best metaphor for the conundrum that is global development?)

That is why in 2018 I am trying to pay much more attention to my heart. Feelings take much more effort to dismiss, and if I can pay attention, each feeling can be a teacher. “Why is this email from my colleague infuriating me? Why do I feel sad about this partner’s decision?” When I then listen from my heart instead of just through the filter of my head, I hear so much more.

On this day, take some time to remember your “love of __________,” which first made you the person who says, “Wait, this is f%#&ed and it needs to be better for more people!” Celebrate that ferocious, protective, mother-love spirit in you that will fuel your integrity and your courage and your solidarity.

These are things that your brain – sharp as it is – can’t deliver on its own.

Integrity, courage, and solidarity are choices made by your heart.

***

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