Why Reconnections

Our commonalities have been lost amongst all the ways we disagree and our backgrounds and identities differ. There are few places this is clearer than in the nonprofit world, where the endless pursuit of funding, influence, and power has led to arbitrary divisions and an inability to foster strategic alliances.

This means that, instead of working to understand and change the systems that have created division and injustice, we are stuck working on single ‘issues’ and ‘sectors’. This, in turn, means we can’t address the systems at the heart of the issues affecting our lives, the planet, and the animals we share it with.

Instead of stopping to reflect, to truly think about the world we want to live in and how we can get there, we are busy – very busy, always busy! – and we allow ourselves to be divided, scrambling for ever-smaller pots of money or larger pots of money that come with the vestiges (and demands) of those in power.

We are disconnected in so many ways...

By our need to compete for funding. This means that those we should be most closely aligned with become our competition. True collaboration is rare because we are all fighting for the same pots of money, controlled by those in government and those with ever-increasing resources.

By our need to build a career and stay busy. Instead of actually focusing on our purpose – whether it be to end homelessness, to address racial inequity, or to end the unnecessary exploitation and suffering of animals – we are incredibly busy with our day-to-day work. These day-to-day tasks keep us from doing the thing we say we are doing. We aren’t figuring out what it actually takes to end world hunger; instead, we’re going to endless meetings, replying to emails, and campaigning for more funding.

By our busyness. We are too busy to actually look around us, to actually examine what we have accomplished and why. We are too busy competing with each other to actually achieve our goals.

By our professional selves. We are too busy building a career and a professional persona to connect with our (non-professional) selves. We have created arbitrary divisions between who we are at work and who we (truly) are outside of work. This allows us to do work we don’t believe in, that is ineffective, and that may even be perpetuating inequity, because we can't imagine another way.

What would it take for us to truly reconnect?

I want us to remember that there is a different way. That, in fact, there are many different ways that could help us reconnect with each other, with our purpose, with the planet, and with the animals we share it with.

I want to create spaces to stop the busyness, to listen to each other, and to re-learn how we can reconnect. I fear that if we don’t, we will just continue fighting for money to stay busy to do the work we are doing and never have the space or time to truly consider why we are doing it and what we want to accomplish.

So, what is reconnections?

It’s an understanding that when we rediscover our common goals and our yearning to live happily, safely, and with dignity – a goal shared by all beings, then we can truly start to make a difference.

The goal of reconnections is not to tell people what the solution is but to help foster the spaces where people can consider what reconnecting means in their own lives, beliefs, work, and activism.

Our divisions have allowed the world around us to become ever more inequitable, while we watch the destruction of our planet and cause unimaginable suffering to our fellow humans and animals. We have been weakened by our divisions. We are stronger together.

How can you start reconnecting today?