I heard a story of a defensive driving instructor teaching people how to safely navigate obstacles on the road. He set up traffic cones on the roadway they were using and instructed each driver to drive straight towards them, then when they got to a certain point, brake and avoid hitting them.
Every single driver ran into the cones.
He then asked, ‘What are you looking at when you are braking?’
‘The cones’ they all said.
To which he replied, ‘Don’t look at the cones, look at where you want to go’.
Every driver was then able to navigate past the cones without hitting them.
Often, we can get so caught up in what we are trying to avoid that we focus all our attention on that one thing, and keep running into it.
Ending poverty can sometimes feel like that. We know that we want to avoid people suffering in poverty. We don’t want people to go hungry. We don’t want people to get sick and die from easily curable diseases. We don’t want people to fall into generational cycles which traps families in a vulnerable state.
We know what we don’t want, but what do we want instead?
Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO of Acumen nails it when she says, “The opposite of poverty is not income, it’s dignity.”
So we are not just aiming for everyone to have more dollars in their bank account, that would help, but it is only one part of the process of each human being having dignity. We are aiming for every human to be respected, belong to a community, receive justice and have the capacity to reach their full potential.
Take your eyes off the traffic cones and aim for where you want to go.
The Generosity Guy 