Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with Jacqueline Novogratz, founder and CEO of The Acumen Fund. She is one of the most innovative and interesting philanthropists around today. Her non profit has taken on the world’s poverty problem by directly investing capital in developing world businesses that have the potential to deliver critical goods and services like health, water, housing and energy.
More than anything, Jacqueline is a very likable person. She’s funny and light and her self deprecation is genuine not a gesture. We had a great conversation and I gathered some great quality of life practices for my book and site. She revealed some incredible insights in our conversation. This is the one that I have continued to think about the most:
“I’m more interested in justice than I am in mercy. I think compassion is really important but compassion without discipline is anemic. And so do you have the courage to be tough, focused, goal-oriented, driven, but simultaneously caring, compassionate, and open minded. That’s the balance that I think none of us do perfectly because it’s such a hard thing to hold both sides of things.”
There is tremendous discussion opportunity with this insight, whether as a way to understand the differences between liberal and conservative mindset (with the enlightened approach seemingly in the middle), as a means of tackling the world’s tough problems or how we live ourselves and raise our families.
While compassion and justice are obviously not mutually exclusive traits, holding both is not a default capability that we as humans have. You have people on the far left of the political/ideological spectrum that have soft, open hearts open to the suffering of all, yet what good if they can not put a just plan into action using effective force when necessary. And you have people on the far right side of the political/ideological spectrum that have justice oriented minds yet what good if they are going about it with narrow mind.
[In any free society around the world, you may find 40% of the population in the camp on the left, 40% in the camp on the right, and 20% with an appreciation of a balanced approach. It is interesting that people in the middle are "independent" types -- the exact trait that makes people not feel a need to belong to a particular "tribe". I digress but until people can become truly independent, they will feel a need to join a "tribe" and thus hold us back as a society in finding the ideal, blessed middle ground.]
My wife and I have been married for six years and are still communicating to find the ideal medium of compassion/justice (and selflessness/selfishness for that matter). But we are doing a pretty good job. We are fortunate because while we may have had some struggles in reconciling our families’ styles, in the end it has made it easy for us to find the right balance, which for us truly is in the middle.
Thank you Jacqueline for the wonderful insight which I know my readers will benefit from!
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Justice vs. Mercy
Balancing justice and mercy is a difficult thing to do and most people never achieve this balance. I believe in order to achieve a good quality of life it is worth struggling to find that balance. You have to learn to take care of yourself before you can take care of others and sometimes that means being selfish (not in a negative sense) before being selfless. As long you as you exhibit both qualities, it will be easier to have a good quality of life.
In yoga, there is an interesting analogy in “hard” and “soft” or “sukkha” and “Shtira,” which translates roughly to lightness and steadiness. It’s like a pendulum that swings between the two and the work is in finding balance between the two, knowing the pendulum will realistically never stop swinging.
Being a husband and father will teach you the very things discussed. It has been so interesting merging my wifes predisposed beliefs being from California and mine being from Texas. We both have benefited tremendously by recognizing eachothers differences and meeting in the middle. Religion and Politics baffles me as it is so one sided with little “Middle Ground”.
Someone (I think in ancient China) once likened finding balance in complex situations to water. It’s both hard and soft. If you slap a pond, it’s hard and stings your hand. But if you gently push through the surface, it’s soft and molds around your hand. From my experience, this duality is ubiquitous. There is no more a singular method than there is a singular correct answer (except maybe in High School math!). When we become wedded to a particular point of view, the situation often stings everyone. But accepting the nature of duality opens up new methods and answers, keeping the situation fluid until an accord can be reached.
Thank you everyone for your comments. It’s an interesting topic for sure. I think the lessons in Jacqueline’s comments also lead to the interesting topic of dichotomies and contradictions in our ways of living. And that they should have a place at the table and not always try to be reconciled. That we should be able to be mature and immature at the same time. That we can be incredibly respectful of others and also be a mixer upper every once in awhile. That we can engage in very deep discussion and also very shallow discussion. And taking this a step further, because of this (my realizing the place for having diverse, sometimes even contradictory ways of living), it also makes me less judgmental of others. Because I realize if people observed me at different times, they might draw different conclusions.
In a civilization when love is
gone we turn to justice and when
justice is gone we turn to power
and when power is gone we
turn to violence.