FOREWORD BY ROBERT B. REICH

IF YOU’RE LIKE most people, you’re working harder than ever before. That’s mainly because the economy has become so competitive that all customers, clients, and investors have many other options. Unless you work hard to attract and keep them, they’ll leave for better deals elsewhere. Even if you’re a professional or working in the nonprofit sector, your organization is likely to be feeling more competitive heat. Lawyers, journalists, and doctors used to be in business to serve the public; nowadays, their organizations are in business to make money, and the competition is intense. Philanthropies, universities, museums, and concert halls used to be dedicated to the poor, to learning, or to artistry. Now they’re in competitive races for resources and attendees. As a consumer or investor, all this new competition is giving you more for your money. But as a person trying to make a living while finding meaning in one’s work and life, it’s wreaking havoc.

If you’re also trying to be an agent of change—a public official, organization leader, or social entrepreneur seeking a fairer or healthier society—your job is doubly difficult. Market forces are allied against you. When jobs are so insecure and wages so unstable, the public is less willing to take chances on ideas that may sound good in theory but could rock the boat even more. When the private sector offers huge monetary rewards to financial entrepreneurs who merely rearrange the pieces of the pie, talented young people are more likely to seek law degrees or M.B.A.’s that lead to prestigious law firms and financial powerhouses than to accept jobs that help redistribute the pie away from the very rich. When the economy allows investors to reap fortunes from hedge funds and private-equity partnerships, there’s less money for or interest in changing the economic order.

So how is one to proceed? In the following pages, Charles Halpern offers a way forward. As you will see, Halpern’s life has been dedicated to positive social change—to comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. As a founder of the Center for Law and Social Policy, the first public interest law firm in the nation; as dean of City University of New York Law School, among the first public interest law schools; and then as president of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, itself dedicated to making the world a better and more humane place, Halpern has collected his share of stars and scars. But what is likely to make this book particularly useful to you—whether you are seeking a more just society or are merely seeking to navigate the difficult currents of a career— is Halpern’s lifetime journey toward finding a place within himself that has allowed him to bear these pressures while simultaneously maintaining his humanity.

As one who has known Charlie Halpern for many years and watched with admiration all that he has accomplished, and the struggles—both professional and personal—in which he has engaged, I can attest to the truth of this story. As one who has had his own share of stars and scars, I can attest to its importance. There is no way for a human being to endure the challenges of social leadership, let alone manage the tumult of a job and a family in this age of supercapitalism, as I have called it, without having the means of discovering and holding on to a part of yourself that remains invulnerable. The more we are able to discover and hold on to this core, the easier our life journey will be. Halpern terms this the practice of wisdom.

Halpern’s personal journey illuminates and integrates two overarching social movements that have occupied what is commonly referred to as “the Left” over the last forty years. One has been focused on the potential for a more just society and world. This movement began with the goal of achieving civil rights for African Americans and was extended to ending the Vietnam War, giving women equal rights, expanding opportunities for the poor or others who have been socially excluded, honoring human rights at home and abroad, and achieving a cleaner and safer environment.

The other overarching movement, by contrast, has looked inward. It has focused on the potential within every person for a full and meaningful life. This second movement began with the goal of expanding the capacity of individuals to be in touch with their feelings and to utilize their intuitions, and was extended to gaining a deeper knowledge of the relationship between the mind and the body, exploring the power of alternative medicines, meditating, and finding other means to spiritual well-being.

These two overarching movements—one exterior and one interior, if you will—have evolved separately. Agents of social change rarely come into contact with agents of personal change, except perhaps when former activists “burn out” and seek solace in discovering their inner lives. Religious movements on the political Right have more fully integrated the exterior and the interior, although from a more authoritarian perspective. But many activists on the Left have long rejected or denied the importance of religion or spirituality, just as many people on the Left who have sought spiritual meaning are deeply cynical about social and political change. Yet, as Halpern helps us understand, fundamental societal change cannot occur without personal change on a large scale, and the agents of societal change cannot muster the resources they need without calling upon their inner strengths. Nor, for that matter, can personal change occur on a large scale unless society is reformed to make enough room for it. Just as decent citizens form decent societies, decent societies form decent citizens. The lives and the great influences of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Dalai Lama exemplify this basic interdependence. By finding the means of weaving the two movements together in his own life, Halpern invites you to do the same in yours. And in so doing, he offers a means of discovering the balance, clarity, compassion, and effectiveness you may need—and that our society and our world desperately need in these tumultuous times.