Recently, I had a call with Tzofnat Peleg-Baker, Ph.D., an applied social psychologist specializing in the cultural and social dynamics that hinder dialogue and collaborative decision-making. While we were discussing the overlap in our work, and how hard it is to hold all the violence and polarization all around us, she said something so clear, and in retrospect, so obvious that I was chagrined that I hadn't thought of it myself. She said, "Peace is harder than war." That com

Photo by Mikhail Nilov Sometimes, at least one person in a conflict wants an apology — not just any apology, but a sincere one that names the harm, commits to doing better, and then actually follows through. For me, there’s a step beyond even that: feeling and expressing genuine empathy for how the action landed with the other person, and checking that that expression of empathy landed. Sometimes I’d prefer that to the apology itself. This got driven home for me years ago at

Act three: Mendful — being the change During the summer of 1993, I received a letter from my father. This was after a series of exchanges that had left me feeling more and more confused, sad, and alienated. This time, the message was clear. Again he recited his misdoings, but this time, he ended with, “Please do not contact me. I cannot respond.” My father died in May of 2025, never having met my son, his only grandson, due to our estrangement. In the intervening decades, esp