Charlotte Bronte classic Jane Eyre includes one of the most famous romantic twists in literature. The young, friendless Jane comes to work as a governess at the house of the wealthy Mr. Rochester, and the two fall in love. But on their wedding day it's revealed that he's still married – to a woman with a mental disorder whom he keeps hidden in the house. Rochester asks Jane to live with him as if they were married – telling her that in his heart she would truly be his wife – but Jane, who lives by principle, says she can't. Murnighan and Kelly say that sometimes you have to sacrifice values for love. If a situation is dangerous or you feel like you're betraying yourself, that's one thing. But they advise that you shouldn't let yourself get hung up on societal ideals that are proving an impediment to your happiness.
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
