We need leaders who are able to vividly remember how it feels to

Host: The night had grown long inside the community center — a place that once echoed with laughter but now carried only the weary rhythm of rain on the roof. The room was dim, lit by a few flickering lamps, their light soft and uneven on the peeling paint. Folding chairs stood scattered in rows, the ghosts of meetings past lingering in their metal frames.

At the front of the room sat Jack — jacket off, sleeves rolled, hands clasped — a man shaped by storms both internal and external. Across from him, Jeeny sat near the window, her small frame haloed by the streetlight leaking through the rain-smeared glass. A poster behind her read: “Community Voices — Healing Through Dialogue.”

Pinned beneath that poster, handwritten in chalk, were the words she had written earlier that evening:

"We need leaders who are able to vividly remember how it feels to experience hardship, trauma and pain, who make us feel less alone." — Stephanie Land

Jeeny: (softly) “That line... it feels like oxygen, doesn’t it? Like something we’ve all been starving for.”

Jack: (leaning forward) “Or like a dream that can’t survive daylight. You want leaders to feel pain? They already do — they just learn to hide it. You can’t govern from a bleeding heart, Jeeny. The world eats gentle people alive.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s why we’re starving — because our leaders stopped being human. The people who should remember what it’s like to hurt... they forget. They start speaking in numbers, not names.”

Host: Her voice trembled slightly, not from weakness, but from the weight of what she carried — the ache of empathy that had nowhere to go. Jack looked at her for a long moment, the rain outside sketching faint lines across his reflection in the window.

Jack: “Empathy doesn’t build bridges. Policy does. You can’t run a country on feelings.”

Jeeny: “You can’t heal one without them either. Policy is the body, but empathy is the pulse. Without it, the whole system goes cold.”

Host: The clock on the wall ticked quietly, like a heartbeat trying to keep pace with their words. The light flickered, casting their shadows across the room — two silhouettes arguing over the soul of leadership.

Jack: “I’ve seen what happens when leaders lead with heart — chaos. They promise understanding, they promise care, but when decisions get ugly, when lives hang on the edge of a budget, compassion turns into paralysis. You have to choose — feel, or function.”

Jeeny: “And I’ve seen what happens when leaders forget to feel — collapse. They build walls, not systems. They confuse distance with strength. The people don’t want perfection, Jack. They want recognition. To be seen. To be understood.”

Host: Her words hit softly, like raindrops on glass, but they left ripples in the silence between them. Jack stood, pacing slowly, his boots echoing faintly against the floor.

Jack: “So what do you want — a world run by therapists? Politicians crying on podiums?”

Jeeny: “No. I want leaders who bleed and lead. Who’ve slept on cold floors, who know what hunger feels like — not metaphorically, but in their bones. Leaders who can sit in a room with the broken and not flinch.”

Jack: (turning sharply) “And how long before that breaks them? You think empathy scales? It doesn’t. You can’t carry everyone’s pain and still walk upright.”

Jeeny: (quietly) “Then maybe we shouldn’t expect them to carry it — just to remember it.”

Host: The room fell into a hush so still that even the rain seemed to listen. Jeeny’s eyes met his — unwavering, steady as truth itself.

Jack: “You think memory makes you moral?”

Jeeny: “No. I think forgetting makes you dangerous.”

Host: The lamp flickered once more, then steadied. The air between them was dense now — not with anger, but with recognition. Two visions of the world, divided not by belief, but by injury.

Jack: (sighing) “You’re talking about leaders like they’re saints. But power doesn’t sanctify — it corrupts. Give anyone too much of it, and the memory fades. That’s survival.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe the problem isn’t power. It’s amnesia. We’ve built systems that reward forgetting — forgetting where you came from, who you once were, what it felt like to fall.”

Jack: “You can’t expect a president to feel like a factory worker.”

Jeeny: “But he can remember being one.”

Host: The sound of thunder rumbled low and distant — the voice of an old world grumbling against the new. Jeeny rose from her seat, walking toward the window, her reflection merging with the storm beyond.

Jeeny: “When Stephanie Land wrote that, she was talking about poverty — about cleaning other people’s homes and feeling invisible. You don’t have to live it forever to understand it, Jack. You just have to not forget that you once did.”

Jack: “And when you do forget?”

Jeeny: “Then people like me remind you.”

Host: A long silence followed — quiet, but alive. The kind of silence that isn’t empty, but full of things finally understood.

Jack looked at her, the defiance in his face melting into thought. His voice, when it came, was softer — almost human again.

Jack: “You know… when I was seventeen, my father lost his job. I remember standing in line with him at the food bank. I remember the shame in his hands — shaking when he signed his name. I swore I’d never end up like that. I worked, fought, climbed… and somewhere along the way, I stopped thinking about the people still standing in that line.”

Jeeny: “Then you just proved her point.”

Jack: (smiling faintly) “Yeah. Maybe I did.”

Host: The rain began to slow. A thin beam of moonlight found its way through the cracked window, landing on the chalked words on the wall — glowing faintly in the dimness:

"…leaders who make us feel less alone."

Jeeny turned, her eyes soft.

Jeeny: “It’s not about perfect leaders, Jack. It’s about human ones. Ones who’ve known hunger, heartbreak, rejection — and still rise to feed, to comfort, to welcome. The ones who lead not because they’re invincible, but because they remember being vulnerable.”

Jack: “You think memory is enough to make a difference?”

Jeeny: “Memory is the seed of empathy. Without it, power is just architecture. With it, power becomes purpose.”

Host: Jack sat down again, slowly. The storm outside had quieted completely now. The world, for once, seemed to pause.

Jack: (after a long breath) “You make leadership sound like an act of love.”

Jeeny: (nodding) “It should be.”

Host: The candle between them flickered, casting soft light across their faces — the hardened pragmatist and the idealist who refused to yield. Two opposites, bound by the same unspoken truth: that the world’s deepest wounds cannot be governed — only remembered.

The rain stopped. Silence filled the room, vast and tender.

Jack looked once more at the chalked quote, the words trembling in the half-light: “Leaders who make us feel less alone.”

He smiled — small, weary, genuine.

Jack: “Maybe it’s time we elect memory, not ambition.”

Jeeny: “Maybe it’s time we remember that power without empathy is just distance in disguise.”

Host: Outside, the clouds parted, revealing a sliver of silver moonlight — faint but undeniable. It spilled through the window, landing on the table where the two sat — no longer debating, but simply being.

And as the quiet settled around them, the truth of Land’s words took root, not as theory, but as feeling — that true leadership is not the absence of pain, but the courage to remember it, and to lead from that remembrance so that no one else must face the dark alone.