Yeah, Totality was awesome.
It would've been just as easy to stay home and experience a near total eclipse. But I'm so glad I didn't.
Yesterday, my family and I drove to Sugarloaf Mountain for the “Skiclipse,” a morning of skiing followed by a long wait through totality. To be honest, I was a little skeptical about this whole eclipse thing. How amazing could it really be and didn’t it sort of happen often enough already? Besides, in the midst of our family’s absurdly busy lives - two careers, two teenagers and their activities, not to mention civic involvements and trying to achieve some social life - passing on a 6-hour roundtrip drive to experience “totality” (not to mention missing work and pulling the kids from an admittedly-truncated day at school) would’ve been perfectly acceptable.
But we didn’t pass. We got up at 4:40am and piled the kids into the car. We skied for 4 hours on the best April snow I’ve ever experienced. Then we saw this:
It's often easy to overlook something extraordinary amidst the routine of daily life. Celestial events are captivating, but what about a renowned musician performing in your town? Or an art installation at your local art museum? A poetry reading? What about orchards in full bloom, peak fall foliage, or simply observing the fireflies in your backyard? These are poignant reminders of the magnificence that envelops us. I hope that readers of this newsletter were able to experience totality, but even if you didn’t - I hope you will spend a moment and reflect on what might be staring you right in the ol’ face.
But this is a philanthropy newsletter, so what the hell is all this nonsense about totality? Well, in our fundraising efforts, we all know the importance of seizing upon once-in-a-generation opportunities that resonate deeply with our supporters. But it’s also equally important that we step outside the grind once and a while to really see what’s going on around us. Are you wrestling with a single word choice in a letter when you should be on the phone with your volunteers? Are you spending time with your constituents or sitting at your desk? Are you focused inward, or are you getting out into the world? Are you trying to convince yourself there will be another day or another time to connect with your donors?
Because the real lesson I took from yesterday is that there were a thousand reasons not to drive to Sugarloaf: Work. School. Traffic. Logistics. And, of course, there were the crowds. We’re all guilty of letting too many of these pass us by because we fail to recognize and act upon them.
But even though the moon blotted out the sun for only 3 minutes, it would’ve been far too easy to opt out of what, for me, was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It was one of those moments that make you say, “Damn” and awaken a sense of wonder, connection, and unity with the universe. That’s how I felt standing atop a bench with my family, an arm around each of my daughters, staring into totality and across an infinite horizon of sunrise and sunset.
And I’ll never, ever, ever forget it.
We can create that wonder as fundraisers. We can embrace the urgency of our missions and treat our donor conversations with a sense of wonder and possibility. We can find ways to create new and profound engagement opportunities that get us out of our everyday routine. Thankfully, we’re unbound by celestial orbits, so we have the power to do this ourselves every single day.
But there’s always going to be a reason not to do it. So I encourage you to fight that urge. Because who knows what you might be missing.