Narrative 4 Summit: Meeting Ishmael Beah and Other Inspiring People

Last month I had the great honor of attending the annual Narrative 4 Summit, which this year was in New Orleans. I got to meet Ishmael Beah, the organization's Vice President. I had read his memoir of being a child soldier when my son was required to read it for high school. Now that I regularly work with refugee youth who are telling their own stories of loss and resilience, it was a blessing to receive some counsel from someone so much more experienced in that work. In fact the gathering, like the organization, offered a feast of widely read writers who excel at describing hard-won hopes.

But what I most enjoyed about the summit was being surrounded, every day, by scores of people who were deeply committed to learning from and caring for others. From Tel Aviv, Israel to Tampico, Mexico, to small towns in the Southern U.S. and South Africa to big cities in the Northern U.S. and Northern Italy and beyond, the rooms and the buses were full of people who were having a blast pouring out their lives in collaboration with others to create bonds of understanding and love.

We are constantly told in the modern U.S. that our principal goal in life should be to pursue and expand our privileges, to get and defend our piece of the American Dream, to "have a good time, all the time"--to "live for the week-end" and "grab the gusto."

But there are many people across the world whose lives suggest that a deeper meaning and even happiness resides in struggling to understand and care for each other. Much of the magic of Narrative 4, I believe, comes from inviting people to experience that way of looking at and living in the world. Being with ninety or so people from across the world devoted to that work revealed and confirmed that an empathetic life is a rich life. Thank you.