Simply Sonia with an I

wearethedigitalkids:

Jacqueline Novogratz: Inspiring a life of Immersion

“I’ve been spending a lot of time traveling around the world these days talking to groups of students and professionals. And everywhere I’m finding that I hear similar themes. On the one hand, people say,’The time for change is now.’ They want to be part of it. They talk about wanting lives of purpose and greater meaning. But on the other hand, I hear people talking about fear, a sense of risk aversion.They say, ‘I really want to follow a life of purpose,but I don’t know where to start. I don’t want to disappoint my family or friends.’ I work in global poverty. And they say, ‘I want to work in global poverty, but what will it mean about my career? Will I be marginalized? Will I not make enough money? Will I never get married or have children?’ And as a woman who didn’t get married until I was a lot older — and I’m glad I waited — and has no children, I look at these young people and I say, ‘Your job is not to be perfect. Your job is only to be human. And nothing important happens in lifewithout a cost…’

We need leaders. We ourselves need to lead from a place that has the audacity to believe we can ourselves extend the fundamental assumption that all men are created equal to every man, woman and child on this planet. And we need to have the humility to recognize that we cannot do it alone. Robert Kennedy once said that ‘few of us have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. And it is in the total of all those acts that the history of this generation will be written.’ Our lives are so short, and our time on this planet is so precious, and all we have is each other. So may each of you live lives of immersion. They won’t necessarily be easy lives, but in the end, it is all that will sustain us.”