I often tell my son that words have remarkable power. Words can heal, or they can harm. They can inspire, or they can dishearten. Words can – and do – change the world.
Knowing how important it is for people to speak up and speak out to achieve change, I invited members of the Atrómitos team to write about an issue that is important to them, one that is central to the well-being of our communities. I had many reasons for doing so, but foremost among them was my need to learn and understand. And a very strong desire that others would also find the opportunity to learn, understand, and reflect.
I’m grateful that my team took me up on this invitation. Between August and October, team members wrote about issues that are important to them.
While these articles touched on deeply personal and diverse experiences, in looking back over the series, I was struck by their commonality. Whether the issue was xenophobia, discrimination, or the pandemic of gun violence, there is a common root cause: fear. Fear of what is different. Fear of change. Fear of loss. Fear of missed opportunity. It is in reaction to that fear of change (or, in some cases, cynical exploitation of the fear of others) that we are now facing the outsized impact of a true minority imposing their individualist concerns on our society with the futile objective of establishing a culture without diversity and a future characterized by control.
The sterile dystopia of a future where diversity is punished and change is viewed with suspicion not only sounds horrifyingly boring, but to paraphrase Robert Alan Aurthur, “cultural diversity brings a collective strength that can benefit all of humanity and so should not separate us from each other.” In short, it is only by recognizing and drawing upon the diversity of our communities that we will have the resources and resilience that we need to adapt to our changing world, and to make tomorrow better (for everyone) than the day before.
I founded Atrómitos over seven years ago with the vision of making things better and a mission of creating healthier, more resilient, more equitable communities. That remains the mission and vision today, but I will be frank, while critical progress is being made, this becomes more and more difficult as practices, policies, and perspectives driven by fear create barriers.
I began this exercise months ago because I wanted to understand better the challenges we are facing. That includes seeking to understand and empathize with those I disagree with (sometimes vehemently so). What I continue to find is that fear is the underlying driver of the discord and discrimination we are experiencing. In many cases, this fear is manufactured in order to influence or control behavior, responses, or reactions.
I understand this inclination towards fear. Many years ago, my younger brother was in a car accident. I got a call from my dad in the early hours of the morning; he told me what happened and asked me to come to the hospital. I drove the hour to get there, walked into the hospital, then through the doors of the ED, and saw my brother lying on a gurney covered in cuts and blood. He’d been there for hours, and I knew that. The fear I felt was all-consuming, from head to toe. I wanted to burst into tears. And in an instant, I decided I’d not express this fear because if I was afraid, it would scare my brother. I was his big sister, and I was never afraid. Instead, I controlled the fear. How? I was furious. I wanted to know WHY after hours, he was still covered in blood, wounds untended. Once I lost steam, my dad explained that a plastic surgeon was on the way because the cuts were on my brother’s face and were not superficial; they needed a plastic surgeon to ensure that the scars would not be horrendous.
Using anger to control fear is typical. And when we don’t have all the information or don’t fully understand what is happening, it is human nature to revert to fear. Fear begets anger and hatred. And…you see the circle.
When I started my company several years ago, I named it Atrómitos. But what does Atrómitos mean? In Greek, it means fearless, but it’s not an absence of fear; instead, it’s a willingness to act despite fear. This means that we will continue to strive to achieve healthier, more resilient, more equitable communities. We will continue to work with companies and organizations that share our values, vision, and mission. It means that even when things are difficult, when we don’t have all the information, or when we don’t fully understand, we will strive to overcome the difficulty, obtain the needed information, to continue to understand fully. We won’t let fear be a deterrent. We won’t be influenced or controlled by fear.
We call on others to do the same. Because as Kofi Annan said “We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race.”
