Dear Bernadette,

OR is wearing me out.

Online OR in-person? Democrat OR Republican? Woman OR man? Happiness OR unhappiness? 

Perhaps more than ever, I'm noticing that every aspect of our complicated, nuanced lives gets reduced to a narrow dichotomy. Are you this or that? For or against? Right or wrong?

This is partly because it’s just so darn hard to resist a ‘this or that’ state of mind. Our brains want to quickly categorize and rate everything so that we can make sense of the world and #next. On the surface, OR makes everything so simplified, concentrated, easy, fun!

And while it’s true that life is about choices, it is not true that there are only two options or that we can only choose one. The greatest breakthroughs, the most enlightening solutions, the sweetest spots are always found somewhere outside the OR; in the land of AND. 

So, this week, I’m over here trying to live the AND life. 

For instance, it may be true that nonprofits have experienced a decline in donations this year. But it may also be true that this moment in time is a turning point that will drive better, more efficient fundraising in the future. AND makes space for the good stuff. Life as we know it has changed and we have the opportunity to start again, better. 

Sometimes the hardest part about making big changes is stopping the momentum of “how we’ve always done things” long enough to change course. For many nonprofits and businesses alike, the momentum has, indeed, stopped and now is the time to imagine a better way forward.

We don’t have to decide if these circumstances are good or bad, we can just let them be good AND bad. 

Can we resist the urge to be “one way or the other”? I'm thinking that real progress means “this way and another”. 

Speaking of good and bad (good that I'm practicing, bad that you get to see it), my latest weekly video update is available on YouTube:

Keep Up the Good Work,

Bern

P.S.

In case you can't tell, I freaking love creating these emails for you every week. If you're enjoying being on the receiving end, please consider forwarding this to a friend. Just imagine all of your friends as happy as you and I are right now. :-)

P.P.S.

My friend, the writer, Peggy Jo Donahue, wrote the following important perspective post about the late Justice Ginsburg on her IG page. If you're interested, it's another great example of and:

“Those who think Ruth Bader Ginsberg cared only about women's rights, might be surprised to learn that four of the six cases she argued before the Supreme Court in her lawyer days actually addressed sexist treatment of men.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking was on behalf of a widower who had lost his wife in childbirth. He wanted to collect his late wife's Social Security benefits, so that he could stay home with their son until the boy went to school. But the law only gave that benefit to widows.

Years later, Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court (by a Republican president), used Ginsberg's cases to write an opinion stating that an all-female nursing school had to admit men. These women had sons, and husbands, and were meticulously fair.

Ginsberg always understood (and celebrated) the differences between women and men. But where their rights were concerned, she felt they both were owed more. As Supreme Court expert Linda Greenhouse wrote "Her project was to free men as well as women, from the roles that society had assigned them and to harness the Constitution to break down the structures by which the state maintained and enforced those separate spheres."

Later in life, when visitors to her chambers would gush about how grateful their daughters were about all she had done for them, she would remind them that their sons should be grateful, too.

Today, it could still be said that sexist treatment of men and women limits and stifles many of us. If you want to do something different from many of your sex, you are still penalized. Men who stay home to care for children are thought less of, generally. Women who are powerful are often hated with a venom that still shocks me. Both attitudes cause hurt and harm. Ginsberg's work isn't done. But this weekend, I honor the strides she made -- on behalf of all of us.”