We're living in an era when many of the great social, economic and environmental experiments humanity has been engaged in over centuries are failing, or have already failed. And while it's true that the only constant is change, I've lived long enough to bear witness to the transition from a period of relative global stability, to profound global fragility.

And in so doing, to observe that most people are now experiencing, or preparing to experience, existential threat.

We find ourselves collectively holding our breath, scanning the news with a sense of dread, and perhaps most tellingly, turning on as much as to each other with increasing frequency. A pervading sense of uncertainty breeds defensiveness that transforms even mundane disagreements into ideological battlegrounds.

In this climate of division, it has become increasingly important for me to examine my own responses and positions within the greater struggle. How does my individual story and privilege shape my relationship to these global challenges? How might my reflexive reactions—however justified they feel—be contributing to the very fragmentation I lament?

I'm the poster child of privilege, and yet I've spent my life fighting inequity in society, culture, environment, politics, and business.

And over the last three months, as I've been forced to stop due to a compound fracture in my spine, it's become excruciatingly clear that fighting has become my de facto way of being, and I've done enormous harm to myself and others.

What's worse, it's antithetical to the change I wish to see in the world.

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." — Rumi

The word "righteousness" comes from the Old English "rihtwīsnes," originally meaning "justice" or "righteous conduct." Yet over centuries, it evolved beyond simply doing what is right. Today, righteousness often carries a sense of moral superiority—a certainty not only that one's position is correct but morally imperative.

Unlike rightness, which suggests correctness, or integrity, righteousness brings moral outrage and a sense of "othering." It feels good precisely because it absolves us of personal responsibility. The righteous stand apart from and above the problem, pointing fingers while their own hands remain clean.

This self-righteous stance is often the first step toward disconnection—from others and ultimately from oneself. When we believe ourselves to be morally superior, we create an adversarial relationship with the world; drawing battle lines that transform potential allies into enemies and dialogue into conflict.

My fractured spine is an unavoidable metaphor for my internal state long before my fall. I had become so identified with fighting that my professional identity and my essential self became radically divergent, with the former regularly drowning out the voice of the latter. The irony is painful: in battling systems of oppression, I had become oppressive to myself—denying rest, rejecting joy as frivolous, viewing compassion toward opposing viewpoints as betrayal.

And in so doing, I brought that oppression into every aspect of my life.

In a talk I gave at a GIZ event a few years back (called $50 Trillion & Change), I remarked that it's easier to be angry than to give way to the inconsolable grief that so much avoidable human suffering has happened on my watch. That while I and millions of others have spent millennia combined seeking to create a more just, equitable and loving world, almost everything, almost everywhere, has got considerably worse.

Yes, there are statistics that will disprove that perspective, but they're mistaking the forest for the trees. For while it's certainly true that in areas like extreme poverty reduction, life expectancy, access to education, and infectious disease control we are, globally, doing significantly better than at any other time in history, we are simultaneously staring down a largely avoidable global metacrisis that represents an existential threat to us all.

And taking far too little collective action to address it.

"The fire of anger only burns the angry; it is blind to what it does to the self." — Hafez

In the face of that, it's understandable to feel angry, afraid, and inconsolably sad.

For the billions living with immediate threats of poverty, war, hunger, and displacement, rage is not a philosophical position but a natural response to genuine suffering. Their anger arises not from righteousness but from the visceral experience of injustice. When survival itself is at stake, fury becomes fuel—necessary and clarifying.

But even justified rage comes at a cost - and is patently unsustainable.

We're in the midst of a global mental health crisis of staggering proportions. The World Health Organisation reports that one in eight people worldwide live with mental health conditions, with rates of depression and anxiety soaring during the pandemic and continuing to climb. Economic insecurity, climate anxiety, political instability, and social isolation have created a perfect storm of psychological distress across cultures and continents.

Yet for impact entrepreneurs, activists, and changemakers, this crisis takes on a particularly cruel dimension. Those most aware of the world's suffering—who've dedicated their lives to alleviating it—often absorb that pain most deeply. We face not only the ambient anxiety of our time but also the specific burden of bearing witness to the injustices we're fighting to overcome. Add to this the precarious funding landscapes, the constant battle for legitimacy, the pressure to demonstrate "impact" in increasingly reductive terms, and it's no wonder so many of us are breaking down along with the systems we're trying to fix.

Rage—from the Latin "rabies" meaning madness or fury—represents anger that has lost its utility. While anger can be focused and clarifying, rage blinds us to reason. Rage is what happens when righteousness festers unexamined, when the pressure builds without release.

But the consequences of our righteous battles extend beyond rage itself—they often manifest in a relentless commitment that hollows us from the inside.

I've witnessed this pattern play out among many of the most dedicated and accomplished change-makers I know. Broken hearts, broken minds, broken bodies, broken homes. And all of us have tales of those who took their own lives - which as distressing as it is, represents a rounding error in the face of those who've seriously considered the possibility.

We celebrate these public sacrifices, while whispering about the personal casualties.

I'm more fortunate than most. I'm a straight, white, middle-aged guy. I grew up comfortably middle-class, am well educated, and well-traveled. While I've certainly experienced struggle, I've always been able to feed, clothe, and house myself, even if on occasion I chose not to. In other words, I'm the beneficiary of systems and structures that were designed to favour people like me.

So while I've spent a lifetime fighting, it's not a fight that's been borne of necessity.

Even though, I see now, I've treated it as such.

I can't begin to know the experience of those living with immediate existential threat as a consistent reality. Frankly, I can never really know the truth of another's experience.

All I have is my own. And …

In my own experience, it's impossible to be consistently angry, consistently fighting, consistently at war, without inevitably doing harm to one's self and to those closest to me.

For while there's something necessary and purifying about pouring fuel on the pyre of unloving systems and structures, we're only ever one small slip from self-immolation.

For me, largely confined to bed since early December, and still recovering from two experiences of burn out in the last five years, I've been forced to confront the fact that, in failing to ever put down my sword I've inevitably brought the war home.

The temple became a garrison, and that's simply no way to live.

"The small truth has words that are clear; the great truth has great silence." — Rabindranath Tagore

Japanese culture offers rich metaphors for this dilemma. Within the samurai tradition, even as warriors trained rigorously in martial arts, the bushido code emphasised cultural refinement through practices like calligraphy, poetry, and tea ceremony. This balance wasn't always achieved in reality—history reveals the complexities and contradictions of warrior classes—but the ideal remains instructive: that those who must fight also need practices of peace.

The 17th century poet Matsuo Basho captured this rhythm perfectly:

"An old silent pond

A frog jumps into the pond—

Splash! Silence again."

This haiku illustrates what I've failed to maintain—the natural cadence of decisive action followed by restoration and peace.

My activism had become all splash with no silence, all disruption with no return to stillness.

Perhaps most profound is the Japanese concept of 'ma' (間)—the meaningful space between things. In calligraphy, music, and architecture, the empty space is as important as what fills it.

Effective change clearly requires not just action but strategic inaction; not just speaking truth to power but creating space to listen; not just righteous anger but moments of still reflection.

I certainly believe that anger has its place. It's part of the full spectrum of human experience, and unlike grief, which can be debilitating, anger can be galvanising.

And yet "there's never mad without sad."

It certainly appears to me that, while so many are understandably raging against the machine, I have unwittingly made adversaries not only of those whom it is so easy to project onto from a distance, but those whom I am closest to.

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there." — Rumi

Reconciliation—from Latin "reconciliare," to bring together again—speaks to the work of repair. It's not merely compromise or détente, but actual healing. The work begins with oneself: reconciling my fierce commitment to justice with my human need for rest and joy. It extends to those closest to me: repairing relationships strained by my absence or ideological certainty. And ultimately, it must encompass even those I've considered opponents: finding the human beneath the position, the fear beneath the resistance.

The irony is that while fighting for a more loving world, I've sometimes failed to nurture love within my immediate sphere of influence. In my focus on the macro, I've neglected the micro—where my highest values must first take root if they are to mean anything at all.

When I get weary of staring at the ceiling, and close my eyes to rest, I believe I'm beginning to glimpse a different way forward: one where I fight fiercely when needed but also lay down arms long enough to remember what I’m fighting for—connection, beauty, love, laughter.

The world needs more than passion. It also needs wholeness.

The most radical act may not be righteousness or rage, but reconciliation—with my own limitations, with those I’ve pushed away, and with the messy, imperfect journey of change itself.

Perhaps only then can I learn from my own failures, and the collective failures of our human experiments and participate in creating homes, communities, and societies that are truly just, compassionate, and loving.