Our time together: Reflections from the This Human Moment team.

Over the past 122 days, we—the team at This Human Moment—have been on our own unexpected journey of the making this series.

At our last “stand down” session after Friday’s episode, we each shared a few words about what that journey meant for us. Here’s a graphic of the words uttered.

What do you yearn for, still?

122 days ago, we sat down for the very first time to create our first episode. From those very rickety first airings (where we couldn’t always get the technology to work) until today when our community is approaching 10,000 members—you have given us the energy and ideas to keep going.

We have co-created seven episodes. And now, we sit down to think about the second season. (We don’t know when, who, how a second season will be born.) But we are starting to summon hope and courage.

“The Work of Moral Imagination.” Created by the founder of Acumen Jacqueline Novogratz, 
Keith Yamashita, and artist Doug Fitch
 with support from Tommy Nguyen.

What we’ve been meaning to tell you for so long:

You have surprised us, humbled us, expanded our sense of the possible. Changed how we aspire to show up in the world. Inspired us to do more, with what we have, from where we are.

This feels like community to us. And a place we can each draw wisdom and solace.

What we wish we told you more often:

We are each a treasure to be discovered by others. You are the stranger on the other side of the bridge that holds the radiance, courage, and capacity to create a more equitable, just, joyful world. Let’s cross the bridge to find each other.

What we think we’ve never told you, and you don’t know:

We’re not done yet. We have so, so much imagination that can be harnessed.

Give yourself a longer treat tomorrow.

Tomorrow’s Friday session represents the final in our first season of This Human Moment. We could not have envisioned it when we first embarked upon this journey nearly 100 days ago.

As we began to put this last show together, it kept expanding to include more wisdom, more joy, and more inspiration.

If possible, please stay with us another 20 minutes or so for a blow-away concert from the Brooklyn Youth Chorus.

Here are just a few of the people joining us on Friday:

Aleshea Harris, Playwright

Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Singers + Dianne Berkum Menaker, Founder and Artistic Director

Davóne Tines, Opera Singer and Musical Artist

DJ E-Clyps, Artist, Producer and Creative

Doug Fitch, Artist and Director

Jack Saul, Artist, Psychologist and Collective Trauma Expert

Jacqueline Novogratz, American entrepreneur and Author, Founder and CEO of Acumen

John David Becker, Photographer

John Paul Lederach, International Peace Builder

Julia Bullock, Classical Singer

Nnamdi Chukwuocha & Al Mills, Poets, Social Workers and Community Activists

Keith Yamashita, Artist and Founder of SYPartners and the This Human Moment team

Family:

The  web of relationships
that gives us the capacity to be truly liberated.

Artist, activist, and academic Jonathan Lykes opens our eyes to the possibility of family as the vehicle to establish systems that provide “full self-determination and full dignity” for all.

He encourages us to imagine and bring to life families that provide the joy, love, safety and support that become the alternatives to systems of oppression—families that allow us to achieve the fullest expression of ourselves.

How might we all create families in which we can find refuge while fueling our imagination as to what does not yet exist, but can?

How might our families—biological, given, or chosen—become positive forces for the world we want to make?

In your email inbox, look for an email named: This Human Moment | Imagining our families. In it will be your answers to these questions, and also some more inspiration to encourage you to keep going.

Honoring how we got here, honoring where we need to go next.

Jonathan shared a liberation chant, paying honor to those who have come before us—to inspire the courage to build the world we must now make.

Duos—and our moral imagination.

Esther Perel began her time with us, by sharing a song.

Her translation, and her meaning, was that “life is a narrow bridge, one must not get seduced by fear of crossing it.”

In this time of tumult, we are tempted by fear—and that often makes us turn away, shun life, venture less.

Yet, Esther argues, this human moment calls on us to redefine our relationship to risk. For imagination and risk are companions: We cannot imagine more intimate, complicit relationships that explore the mystery of what can be, what could be, what should be—if we are not willing to risk crossing the bridge and conspire together. To imagine together. “This sanctuary of our imagination is probably one of our last sovereignties”—a place Esther Perel invites us to explore in our relationships.

She asked us to write a letter “to those that you have scorned, ignored, misunderstood, misjudged. All of those who sometimes live right by you, but who you think are so different than you. Those that you need to meet on the other side of the bridge. Different race. Different religion. Difference. Difference. Difference.”

This is an act of risk. A risk, that when taken, has the potential for us to see the radiance of that person, and for them to see the radiance within you.

In your email inbox, look for an email named: This Human Moment | Crossing the bridge. In it will be your answers to these questions, and also some more inspiration to encourage you to keep going.

Letter One

Write a letter to someone in your life right now. As Esther instructs us, begin with, “I’ve been meaning to tell you . . .” Set aside your fear for a moment and simply express the one thing that you want them to hear. The thing you need to tell them. The thing that will embolden each of you to cross the bridge together.

Letter Two

Now write a different letter. Write a letter to someone you need to know better—someone who seems so different than you, someone who perhaps stands on the other side of the bridge—distant and away, but toward whom you know you need to walk. Begin with, “I don’t know you well and yet . . .” And see where the prompt leads you.

The first draft of these letters is for you. Write second or third or fourth drafts that you want to share, in real life, with these other people.

Draw strength from Esther, as she shares her letter to her husband Jack.

A moral imagination about self.

“We always have another deeper place we can go to where we can become better”—a place, David Whyte calls us to through his poem, Just Beyond Yourself.

As Keith Yamashita points out, “Each of us, as individuals, are the atomic unit of change.” So our greatest power to conjure imagination starts within—in our own ability to move beyond our narrative, self-story, myths of self—and go deeper.

As Gayle Young Whyte invites, “It’s about expanding our container of awareness—about the things we tell ourselves about ourselves, and be open to other data and facts that arise.”

Many of us—as an example, in this era of racial reckoning—are beginning to hold two seemingly conflicting thoughts about ourselves:

I am a “good person.”
And “I am a racist.”

This emergent realization is that we can have good intentions and at the same time—often unknowingly or unconsciously—perpetuate racist systems because they are so all pervasive we fail to see them.

And so our journey from here is about moving that awareness to a greater accountability, then action.

Yesterday, we asked how you wanted to be remembered during these times.

Today, let’s start gently—you can work on anything you wish.

(If you specifically want to work on your role in this era of racial reckoning, please consider doing the three-step exercise below even more deeply.)

If you prefer pen-to-paper, click through the prompts using the “Return” key, and write your answers on a piece of paper.

Tomorrow, we’ll send you even more inspiration to help you delve deeper.

*Once complete, you’ll receive an email summary that captures your responses under the subject line: This Human Moment | Growing beyond ourselves.

“And it leads us to a place, a spacious place that’s difficult to get to, difficult to drop below, a place where we have to go through our sense of fearful vulnerability to a place where we have no resentments towards others. Actually where other people are not in competition with us.”

—David Whyte

For those of us who want to work on summoning a moral imagination about becoming anti-racist, here is a three-step contemplation.

Memorialize your learnings.

Write down your responses to memorialize them. And we’ll send you back your own responses for your safekeeping as well as a resources list for further learning.

*Once complete, you’ll receive an email summary that captures your responses under the subject line: This Human Moment | Memorialize your learnings.

Our guest from Session 2, Krista Tippett says, “This is a species moment.”

And, isn’t it?

What we choose to do from here will shape the arc of history.

How do you want to be remembered?
How were you present and engaged in the shaping of these times?

What is your relationship to that question?

We can choose to see how these crises offer opportunities for growth. As individuals. In our relationships. In our families and teams. In our organizations and institutions. As nations.

That is not to say this is easy.

Quite the contrary, from the hardship, anger, grief, and sorrow, we gather our courage for positive change.

Yesterday, we reflected a bit on where we are now.
Today, let’s tap into what we yearn for—what our preferred future is.

If you prefer pen-to-paper, click through the prompts using the “Return” key, and write your answers on a piece of paper.

Tomorrow, we’ll send you even more information to help you delve deeper.

*Once complete, you’ll receive an email summary that captures your responses under the subject line: This Human Moment | An expanding awareness.

Where does the world meet us? Where do we meet the world? We respect Acumen’s Jacqueline Novogratz’s definition of moral imagination, “To have the humility to sit with what is, and the audacity to imagine what could be.”

When we adopt this as our way of being, as our stance to the world as it unfolds in front of us, we are more capable of meeting that world—and we are more capable of building a mindset of imagination and possibility.

So much conspires against imagination: The status quo. Power. Institutions. Systems that oppress. The lethargy of what is. All these stand steadfastly in the way.

To summon our own moral imagination, therefore, is often a renegotiation with:

RISK. Esther Perel shared with us, “To cross the narrow bridge, we cannot be seduced by fear.”

TENSION. This era is full of polarities—profound sadness and hope, brutal distraction and new pattern, moral injury and moral repair. Gayle Young Whyte shared with us, “We can and must grow our containers of awareness. And to hold these tensions as polarities not to be resolved, but to be harnessed.”

SELF-NARRATIVE. We must dig deeper than our self-myths or self-stories. David Whyte urged us to go, “Just beyond yourself. It’s where you need to be. Half a step into forgetting and the rest restored by what you’ll meet.”

How do we find beauty in the challenge?

We have been conditioned to see things as they are rather than as what they can be. As David Whyte says, we “name things too early” rather than look for the possibility of what can be. Or as Esther Perel says, “We assume that we know the other,” rather than instead, “Holding true that no matter what we see—there is always more.”

In Session 7—coming this Friday—we will be joined by peacebuilder John Paul Lederach who will share with us his conditions and elements of moral imagination:
1) Imagination of the Web,
2) Imagination as Curiosity,
3) Imagination is Creativity,
4) Imagination of Risk.

(More about John Paul as this week goes on.)

Where do you wish to apply your profound talents at the start of this new era?

This animation is meant to inspire possibility. In yourself, about the evolution of what makes you, you.

And then, in our duos: What imagination is required to bring curiosity and an ability to lean into tensions in this moment?

And in our families: What imagination must we unleash to create chosen families that provide the safety, care, and love that every person deserves?

And in our communities: How do individuals, duos, and families come together to unleash the imagination of what community can be?

And in our nations: How can we create systems of liberation to replace systems of oppression?

The House and Ballroom Community

“The House and Ball Community—AKA the ballroom scene—is a national subculture of Black and Latinx LGBTQ youth and adults. Evolving from Harlem drag balls throughout the Harlem Renaissance (1920s), the house ballroom community provides a platform that celebrates all forms of gender and sexual expression.” 

Click here to learn more

The Marshall Project

Leaders such as Angela Davis have painted a powerful vision of a world without prisons. A system built for restoration rather than punishment. The Marshall Project is furthering this vision and breaking down political and cultural barriers that have prevented abolition.

Click here to learn more

Sins Invalid

“A disability justice-based performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and LGBTQ / gender-variant artists as communities who have been historically marginalized.”

Click here to learn more

The Sunrise Movement

An American youth led organization with a mission to create jobs and end climate change. “Sunrise Movement demands a new chapter in this country and encourages other groups in the climate and environmental movement to join us in speaking out. As climate activists, we imagine a world that looks nothing like our own, one where we stop climate change by transforming our whole economy.”

Click here to learn more

Seeds of Peace

Is a peace building and leadership development organization. Bringing together youth and educators from around the world to hone the skills and relationships they need to accelerate social, economic, and political changes essential for peace.

Click here to learn more

Some key thoughts from Session 6:
A New Moral Imagination (Part I)

This era in history deserves anger, rage, protest, tenderness—and alongside these things, also a new and more muscular imagination of what can now become. Keith shares some ideas about the levels that are deserving of our greatest imagination.

ME

To spark our own imagination, we must first travel inward. To get to the space poet David Whyte called, “the nameless place”—the place that is below our self-story, below our fear, below the names we have for people and ideas. It is here, “where we have to go through our sense of fearful vulnerability to a place where we have no resentment toward others.”

How can we take a half-step into our own future?

DUO

As Esther Perel shared, “Freedom is found in our imagination.” And imagination requires risk and playfulness. What bridge do you need to cross with someone else to create a better world for all? How might you become complicit with another—kindling your curiosity, and understanding that whatever we see in another there is always more?

What new orientation to risk is required?

FAMILY

How we create family is an act of moral imagination. Activist, artist, organizer and academic Jonathan Lykes reminded us that reimagining family can be the vehicle for “creating systems of liberation”—alternative systems to those that are not serving us. Families create the culture of safety, love, faith, and joy that we need to muse and make new systems.

What role will your family play in the world that you think deserves to be made?

A contemplation and reflection exercise

Take a moment. Look at your notes, your exercises, your thoughts you took away from our session. Today’s tool helps you take stock of where you are in this moment.

If you think using a keyboard, *use these prompts to inspire you. Click Start below.

If you prefer pen-to-paper, click through the prompts using the “Return” key, and write your answers on a piece of paper.

Tomorrow, we’ll send you even more information to help you delve deeper.

*Once complete, you’ll receive an email summary that captures your responses under the subject line: This Human Moment | A contemplation exercise.