“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” –Alice Walker

In preparing The Circle for its launch today, I’ve been asking CLP alumni for blog post ideas: interviewees, leadership via the creative arts, how we recharge and prevent burnout, thoughts and feelings on current, pressing issues for The Current section.

Surprisingly, offers for The Current have been far fewer than for the other sections. I’ve been pondering why this might be; and in the process, realized I also was resisting offering my own perspective here (until now).

I’m feeling overwhelmed – again – by the scope and depth of the world’s problems. I’ve always hesitated to focus on ‘just’ one area of need, because there are so.many.more. needing equally urgent attention. Environmental destruction and climate change. Abuse of power and lack of accountability. Discrimination and lack of equal opportunity. Racism, American apartheid and caste system. The civil and human rights crisis of U.S. mass incarceration and our criminal “justice” system. Lack of support for public schooling and the arts. Lack of full access to good health care. Fear-based immigration policy. Patriarchy, misogyny. Islamophobia. Elected officials at the federal level with a stunning lack of compassion and empathy, including our own president actively emboldening ‘alt-right’ KKK/neo-Nazis, seemingly trying to destabilize and undermine many of the same things he is sworn to protect. And 172 others.

I have coached myself through this conflict before. And, I have sung it.

The ancient Three Wise Monkeys parable has appeared at various times throughout my life: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. When I researched it to learn more, I discovered there are two opposing views of its meaning.

Some think the monkeys are stopping evil because they’re not engaging it; others think the monkeys are perpetuating evil because they’re ignoring it. In my song (and music video), a new fourth wise monkey implores the Three Wise Monkeys (and me, and you) to take a stand, make a choice, pick a side, and do something to make the world better. (In the video, they move from passive to active and are focused on dismantling unjust mass incarceration.)

The reminder I need again on this new year’s day, is to do something – not everything.

Which brings me to the Community Leadership Program and why I’m so glad to be The Circle’s co-founder and its first creative director and editor. Each of us in CLP is doing something. We stand and work side by side by side, making our community, state, country and world better, healthier. You help me remember that I’m not in it alone. I can focus on one part, and stand in awe and respect for you focused on yours. We get to share the intersections, the overlaps, the learning and wisdom at the core.

So here’s to each of us individually and to all of us collectively, working to protect the environment, educate, expand opportunities, hold ourselves and other leaders accountable, strengthen individuals and families and communities and organizations, confront racism, misogyny and discrimination, close prisons and change profoundly unjust culture; register voters; train and organize; provide health care; welcome and resettle refugees and immigrants; grow, heal, create, build bridges, wage love, and 172 other solutions.

We get there, as always, together. In the big, satisfying leaps and bounds, and in the hundreds of thousands of tiny steps leading up to positive tipping points.

As Samuel Beckett wrote, “The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place everyday.” Here’s to a new year of continued connection and bending Dr. King’s moral arc of the universe toward justice.

To reach Lara directly: Lara@LaraHerscovitch.com or thecircle@clpnewhaven.org

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