A Point of View: Peace, Love, Inclusion

As much as I love to write about contemporary social issues, I must admit that I struggled with this post.  As I contemplate the state of the planet, everything that comes to mind is negative, depressing, frustrating and at times, downright confusing.  I wrote something else for this week’s post, but after reading it, I decided that I was tired of pointing out what’s wrong with the world and offering some hackneyed solution.  So, I asked myself, isn’t there anything positive that you can write about?  What are some signs that there is more peace, love and inclusion in the world? Surely, it’s not all bad news.

I am a fan of Good Morning America and ABC’s Nightly News with David Muir. Good Morning America balances the bad news with a sprinkling of human-interest reporting. However, the headlines are usually breaking negative news. The Nightly News is mostly negative until you get to the end where they report on a heart-warming human-interest story.

I also love NPR’s in-depth reporting.  It often raises more questions for me as I contemplate the different perspectives offered, sometimes increasing my confusion and feeling of helplessness.

Much of what I read on social media (I must admit, I am not a big consumer) ranges from humorous to downright abominable.

I guess every generation has faced awful times—wars, slavery, apartheid, genocide, depressions, civil unrest, drugs, etc. So maybe this is nothing new.  Maybe the “newness” is that technology permits a 24/7 deluge of negative news. This deluge reveals a heightened atmosphere of polarization and, most scary, hate. We seem to feed on the macabre…The more horrific, the more we want to hear about it and wallow in it.

What if we were just as hungry to hear about and spread good news?  The constant barrage of distressing information is not good for our health—physical, mental or spiritual. At The Winters Group, we encourage more self-care to cope in these difficult times. One recommendation is to unplug. But what if we didn’t need to because there was more of a balance?

So, I would like to encourage each of us to find something every day to be positive about—something that makes us happy and encourages our spirit.

The Inclusion Solution will start a Peace, Love, Inclusion effort where we will find good news to share and invite our readers to share their good news too.  The good is out there. We just can’t hear it because the roar of what’s wrong with the world is so loud.

It’s all about balance for me, and my point of view is that scales have tipped way too far on all that is bad.

For your Peace, Love, Inclusion news this week, Arlan Hamilton, founder and managing partner of the venture fund Backstage Capital, announced that her new $36 million fund will invest exclusively in black women-led startups. We’re excited to hear about Hamilton’s inspired choice to take the future of black women entrepreneurs and the future of business into her own hands. Read more about her and her fund in this interview.