We’ve all had those moments when we just don’t know what to do. I felt that way on the morning of November 6th. Then I read the quote above on Leta McCollough Seletzky’s Threads feed, and it really struck me.
This is what I know how to do:
Be curious
Listen
Synthesize and weave together information
Tell stories
Nurture myself and others
It’s no wonder when the reality of the election results set it, these are the exact things I began to do. Now that we’re preparing for a future that’s so uncertain, consider what you know how to do, what you like to do, what you’re good at, and what motivates you to keep going. Do those things where you are with what you have right now.
There will be no shortage of those who need help and no shortage of the things they’ll need help doing. What you know how to do will be needed by someone somewhere. We’re all in this movement together. More tomorrow…
I want to tell you a story about darkness and light. When I was diagnosed with cancer, and when almost died from cancer treatment (twice), it was often difficult to see beyond the darkness. I was standing in the crucible. At one point a lethal, unknown allergy to a chemo drug shattered my lungs and I was suffocating. We were deep in the pandemic in New York City before vaccines. The attending physician wanted to intubate me in the ICU, surrounded by COVID patients. At that time, being intubated was almost certainly a death sentence.
The ICU nurse insisted we try two more types of bedside respirators. “You have 10 minutes,” yelled the attending physician. “If her oxygen number doesn’t go up, I’m taking her to the ICU.” I had 10 minutes to save my life.
The nurse smiled at me. She tried the first machine. We waited. It didn’t work.
The nurse’s smile shrank. We tried the second machine. We waited. I looked at the ceiling. I called my ancestors. They were there. Not to intervene, only to catch me if it was my time to crossover. In that moment, all I wanted was my dog and the people I love. Love was all that mattered. Love was the secret to living, and it took possible death to teach me that.
I looked at the attending’s face. Her eyes grew wider. Her mouth fell open. I looked at the nurse; her smile had returned.
“Holy sh*t,” said the attending.
My numbers were climbing. The attending left the room.
“I’ll be back to check on you throughout the night and we’ll be monitoring you from the desk just outside the door,” the nurse said as she placed the call button in my hand. “If you need anything, press this button.”
I nodded. The nurse left the room. My ancestors smiled and walked back over a hill.
“Not today, Death,” I thought. “Not today.”
When we’re deep in the darkness, we can only see our way forward if we raise our light and take one step at a time. Maybe that’s where you are right now. Things look dark. You can’t find a lamp. It turns out the light isn’t out there; it’s in you and the people around you. We are lights to each other. We can’t see the whole path, and that’s okay. Step by step, we’ll get there, together.
In the days ahead, I want you to hang on to that image of raising our light and being on the path together the way I hang on to what happened to me in 2020 in that hospital room when I was 10 minutes from death. Call your ancestors, friends, therapist, neighbors, religious leaders, and anyone in your community who is a light. We have a lot of challenges ahead to work on together and meeting them is going to take all of us being at our best. Take care of yourself now so we can take are of each other tomorrow. You got this, and I’ve got you. More tomorrow…
When we consider hiring (or electing) leaders, we often jump to their experience and policies. General McMaster is asking us to consider who they are. We live in a highly dynamic world. From one day to the next, we’re experiencing dramatic and sweeping changes. New information is widely and broadly disseminated at lightning speed. We need leaders who can operate in this paradigm and help others navigate it, too.
Rather than looking at a leader’s past experience, what if we think about how they approach the future? Can a leader adapt and adjust? Are they flexible? Do they have a learning-mindset? A grow-mindset? Are they thoughtful? Are they collaborative? Do they care about the people they serve and support? Are they surrounded by bright, eager, caring people? Do they exhibit empathy and compassion? Is love a core value, and how have they demonstrated the use of love in their leadership?
How might hiring (and elections) shift if we embraced General McMaster’s advice? What kind of world might we be able to build together if the strength of someone’s character was consider at least as much as their experience and policies?
This switch undoubtedly makes hiring and elections more nuanced, complex, and time-consuming. However, given the state of the world and rate of change we’re experiencing, leadership has never been more important to the stability of our planet and society. We deserve to have leaders who are up to the challenges of today and tomorrow. To find and hire these leaders, we need to invest the necessary time and effort to find out who they are, what we care about, and how they can help us move forward together.
At 3am on Friday morning, I was woken up out of a sound sleep. A man was on Coney Island Avenue, which my apartment faces, screaming. “Help! Someone please help me! Please!”
He was rolling around on the ground. It was cold, windy, and dark. He was alone. People were walking by him, not paying him any mind. There was something so earnest in his voice, so bone-chilling. I called 911.
The 911 operator asked for my name, phone number, address, and any details about the man, though I had very little to offer except his location. I hung up, and 10 seconds later my local police precinct called me back. The sergeant asked all the same questions the operator asked me. My guess is they were checking to make sure this wasn’t some kind of prank. When I told him the man had been crying out for a few minutes, he said, “Really? You’re the only call we’ve gotten.”
30 seconds later, two police cars and an ambulance pulled up to the corner. The man’s cries quieted. The EMTs immediately got him onto a gurney and wrapped him in blankets. One of the police officers walked down the block and collected a backpack and a walker. He loaded them into the ambulance with the man and the EMTs. I don’t know why his walker and backpack were so far from where he was. Was he attacked? Was he disoriented? I’ll never know. I do know I’m glad I called. I’m glad he got help.I’m glad the system worked.
I went back to bed after the scene was cleared. I said a prayer hoping he would get all the help he needed. I thought about how no one else had called, not the people walking by the man, not even the attendants at the 24-hour gas stations or bodegas on the corner.
I wonder what’s happening to us in this world, how and why we’ve become immune to cries for help, why we assume people in desperate need have somehow brought the situation on themselves. I wonder why our sense of humanity and decency is eroding. Why are we not helping when the need is so clear and persistent?
A European friend of mine once said to me he thought the saddest thing about America is that it has no social safety net. What I realized in those early hours of Friday night is that we do have a social safety net, and it’s us. We have to be the social safety net for each other. When someone cries out for help, we need to show up and extend a hand. We’re all just walking each other home.
While there is a lot of fanfare on International Women’s Day and much to celebrate if we look at the (very) long arc of history, gender inequities all over the world are vast and sadly, growing. In recent years, women’s gains have been reversed with actions like the repeal of Roe v. Wade in the U.S. and the outsized negative impacts of the pandemic on women such as loss of healthcare, education, and employment opportunities, increased hunger, and skyrocketing gender-based violence.
Equal pay for equal work is still a distant dream: On average, U.S. women earn 16% less than men who do the same job, making 84 cents for every dollar earned by a man. Women of color in rural areas are paid 44% less than rural white, non-Hispanic men doing the same job, making just 56 cents for every dollar. And let’s not forget women are expected, and sometimes required and forced, to do the lion’s share or totality of work to care for children and a home at great sacrifice to their own personal wellbeing and aspirations.
To truly realize equity and equality of women, we must uplift them in real, tangible, actionable ways. So today, on this International Women’s Day, do this: listen to, encourage, and offer assistance by every means you have to help a woman in your life fulfill a dream they have, whether it’s a personal or professional endeavor. And then tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow do the same. A world of more and better opportunity for women is a better world for all people and all beings.
Commit to not only celebrating International Women’s Day but making every day a day we move women closer to equity and equality in every way in business, government, and society. Women have more than earned seats at every table everywhere. Build a longer table. Add more chairs. Listen. Respond. Activate. Repeat. Again and again and again. For as long as it takes. Women are worthy.
Photo of Brooklyn sunset taken by Christa Avampato
In the last days of his presidency, Bill Clinton called PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. “You are a great man,” said Arafat. “I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you made me one,” Clinton replied. I don’t know if Arafat can bear all of the blame but he was a key player in the region’s failure. Never quite endorsing nor denouncing anyone or anything, he failed his people and neighbors by holding to the messy, non-committal middle.
After Arafat shook hands with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn, Hamas’s (then called Change and Reform) rage exploded into violence. They narrowly won the 2006 election with 44.45% of the vote. Fatah, the next closest party and founded by Arafat, won 41.43%. The remaining 5 parties collectively won 12.3%. It wasn’t a runaway victory. A majority of Palestinians didn’t want Hamas.
2006 was the last time Palestinians voted. With 50% of Gazans under 18 today, they had no say in 2006. We have no idea how they’d vote now.
We know Hamas wants Israel to invade Gaza. They’d love to publicize the casualties. It’ll be bloody, horrific hand-to-hand, door-to-door combat. Only fans of chaos win that kind of war.
This picture is the view from my Brooklyn apartment. I spend a lot of time at this window, looking out across Ditmas Park, Kensington, Borough Park, Midwood, Greenwood, Windsor Terrace, Bay Ridge, Sunset Park, Fort Hamilton, Dyker Heights, and Bath Beach. They’re some of the most diverse neighborhoods in the world. A mix of every religion, culture, and ethnicity. Many Jews. Many Muslims. All New Yorkers, and so far, peaceful.
I hope it’s not too late for peace. The world could give Palestinians an option other than Hamas with humanitarian aid and safe passage. The Arab world could denounce Hamas, come to the table, and stand for peace for all. If we leave Gazans with no food, water, medical care, or electricity, their desperation will grow exponentially. I’m afraid of where that leads.
Is peace ever impossible? Is a spirit of humanity ever completely snuffed out? Time will tell.
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” ~ Antoine de Saint Exupéry, author of The Little Prince (among many others)
Today I want to talk to you about how storytelling has a vital role to play in saving the planet. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been consumed with getting ready to start my new graduate program in Sustainability Leadership at University of Cambridge. I’ve completed my first set of assignments and the first (very long!) reading list. I’ve read well over a thousand pages of documents, reports, data collections, and science journal articles. I have 10 new books on my to-be-read list, many relating to the connections between the economy, nature, and societal structure. It will come as no surprise that much of it is bleak, and there is some hope sprinkled in here and there.
Here’s what I didn’t find on a single page I read: what will our world look, feel, sound, smell, and taste like when humans learn how to live on this planet in a sustainable way?
The science matters. We have to have the reporting and data to show what’s happening in real-time right now, and explain what can happen if we don’t turn things around and fast. We need the urgency provided by the dire warnings. The doomsday scenarios are true possibilities and we’re on a collision course with them.
We also have to give people hope by explaining all we stand to gain if we change our ways, systems, governments, businesses, cities, economies, and — here’s the kicker — our values.
For decades we’ve been obsessed with efficiency and convenience, and in the process have caused a massive number of extinctions and destroyed priceless ecosystems that we’ll never see again. We stand to lose much more if we don’t realize we must value nature because nature underpins every aspect of our lives and livelihoods.
We have no future without nature and we need to wake up to that reality.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what it would take to give people an experience of what a truly sustainable world will be like. How can we make it an experience that sticks with people long after the experience is over, motivates them to make changes in their lives, and causes them to demand change from the businesses they patronize and the governments of which they’re citizens?
How can we, in the words of Antoine de Saint Exupéry, make them long for the healthy, thriving, clean sea, literally and figuratively?
I’ve been immensely inspired by the immersive exhibits that are all the rage right now — Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience and Imagine Picasso are two examples of the tech-centric, projection-based exhibits that are everywhere. In February, The New Yorker wrote a long, exceptional piece on this trend. For many years, I’ve been a fan of immersive theater like the wildly popular Sleep No More that’s a bit like Clue meets haunted house meets Eyes Wide Shut, complete with masks for all guests so you feel like you’re at a costume party. Since I was a child, I’ve loved choose-your-own-adventure stories. And let’s be honest; I still love choose-your-own-adventure stories.
So here’s my proposal — what if we take the:
technology of immersive art exhibits
participatory storytelling of immersive theater
user-guided choice of choose-your-own-adventure stories
science of climate change
to not tell, not show, but allow people to experience how climate change will look, sound, smell, taste, and feel if we continue on our current trajectory and if we make the needed, massive changes to save the planet, save ourselves, and save all the species who call Earth home? There would then we an online component that would connect people to one another and provide support for making the changes we need and charting collective and individual progress because as we know, what gets measured gets done.
Would that be a way to use multi-sensory storytelling as a tool to motivate people, open their hearts and minds, and give us a fighting chance at building a sustainable society together? If executed flawlessly and meaningfully with heart, I think this might be part of the solution we need that doesn’t yet exist. What do you think?
When I worked at Amex from 2008-2012, I would sneak away from my desk for a few minutes, go up to the 50th floor, and look out the big bay windows at New York Harbor, one of the busiest harbors in the world that has very strong currents and tides.For me, New York Harbor was then and is now a powerful allegory to our nation’s circumstances. A few minutes with that view kept me sane and calm in times that were anything but. Seeing the Statue of Liberty and Governors Island reminded me that no matter how troubled the waters of our nation are, we would be okay if we could all hang together and support one another.
I’ve been thinking about that view a lot lately as we face times that seem just as uncertain and frightening with the executive orders regarding immigration and the battle now being waged around financial regulation. How can we disagree so vehemently and remain united? How do we move forward when there is such fundamental disagreement on a human level? These are questions I will continue to consider in the coming months and years. I’ll let you know what I find.
Christa Avampato 