hope

I'm increasingly convinced that the only way forward in a world full of hurt and anger and suspicion is people telling their own stories.  Policy and scholarship do not change hearts.  Data, facts, and even-headed analysis do not change hearts.  The only way hearts are reached and touched and changed is by the connection that happens when someone invests in another person's story despite themselves.

Which brings me great optimism, we live in the digital era, where everyone and anyone can tell their story.  If we can avoid accompanying them with too much moralizing, or with overdrawn conclusions, and just trust the stories to stand by themselves (which falls on the feminine side of a dichotomy.... but....)  Then stories can find their ways into chinks and cracks and bring to bear the fruit of new thoughts and expanded paradigms.

So much energy in the world seems dead set on polarizing, dehumanizing, and other-izing.  I see this as the only way forward.