By Matt Robinson
Contributing Writer
REGION – As his son prepared to head off to college, Glenn Cort decided to write him a letter to share the life lessons he had garnered through years as a lawyer and member of a family business.
As we age, experience turns to learning, and knowledge turns to wisdom. Unfortunately, not everyone is able (or, more accurately, willing) to share that wisdom with others.
Perhaps they think their ideas do not matter and that people have heard similar stories before. If only they could see how advice, even meant for one person, could change the lives of many people.
From letter to book
Cort’s letter eventually became a book called “Letters to Mikey.”
“I found myself at a loss as to what to tell him about the world we lived in,” Cort admitted. “It seemed to me that the society had changed in ways that I couldn’t understand…and so I went searching as to whether or not there were any sources of reality or truth or essential grounding authority that could unite us.”
In writing to his son, Cort came upon what revealed themselves to be universal truths.
“What I found…are reasons for optimism,” he maintained, “rooted mostly in the idea that when we were born, we were born with incredible talents, and an incredible capacity to get along with one another.”
A wide audience
While the book was intended for one person and while its subtitle is “Messages of Hope and Optimism for Young Americans,” Cort’s letter has gone on to touch thousands of people of all ages and has also inspired many people to share their own gems of wisdom.
“I believe we can do a better job of teaching these time-tested virtues,” he suggested, “and helping kids hold onto the great traits that they’re born with.”
When asked how he first came to appreciate learning, Cort admits that he was “very green” in college and “did not apply myself to studies.” However, he countered, he “liked to learn” and so chose to go to law school so he could “become a learner.”
Law and business career
After practicing as a prosecuting attorney, civil litigator, and criminal defender, Cort also served in the civil rights division of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office.
Eventually, however, he was called into the family business, which was involved in construction.
“Although it was ultimately my decision,” he mused, “I wondered for years if it was a cowardly one.”
Eager to contribute in other ways, Cort made a promise to a friend that he would volunteer with an educational nonprofit that was affiliated with the Boston Public Schools.
“I was given an opportunity to teach a group of high school seniors…through a non-profit called Digital Ready,” Cort recalled. “We were advancing their skills with using technology, and at the time my modular construction business was applying a lot of technology to our work.”
Life-changing experience
Though the lessons themselves may have been old hat to Cort, the experience changed him profoundly.
“Everything in the experience changed the trajectory of my life,” he maintained.
As he had studied sociology in college, Cort was fascinated with what he saw as a “fragmentation” in American society. When he was given a chance to work with the next generation of citizens and leaders, Cort took the opportunity to explore this issue with them, in the hopes of doing what he could to change and correct it.
“The experience I had in that classroom motivated me to research the factors which would cause the children to be so cynical about the world they were living in,” he explained. “We were all struggling in that classroom to make sense of the chaos and confusion and distrust, which is the new normal in America. The noise and confusion of American culture dominated our classrooms and left me searching for answers to help the young people, and myself, make sense of it.”
Perhaps realizing that changing an entire culture would be too much of an ask (at least right off the bat), Cort decided to focus on his own society and wrote a letter to his then 18-year-old son. That letter eventually grew into a book that Cort has been selling and giving away in an effort to share his ideas and learnings about society and how people can learn (or re-learn) to discuss without arguing and, in a general sense, to get along.
Despite the personal and general importance of the boom, Cort has faced the same challenges many first-time authors do.
“It’s been very hard to distribute the book,” he frowned, “even for free!”
Civics curriculum
In an effort to expand his audience and share his ideas and those of the many whom he has been able to engage in his campaign for civility, Cort has created an entire curriculum and program called Getting Along Academy (https://www.gettingalong.com).
“I started to see a workshop or a curriculum,” Cort replied when asked how the idea for the larger movement began, “a civics curriculum for teenagers that I believe might be able to give them a framework which they could latch onto, like a life raft, to help better navigate their differences and disagree without dividing.”
Though the hill remains challenging, Cort keeps climbing one person and shared idea at a time.
“To achieve the type of counterculture transformative change we will need to muster to overcome the many complex forces that hold us down by confusing, blinding, and dividing us,” Cort observed, “it will require much work by all of us.”
In an effort to stem (or even turn) the tide, Cort continues to expand his offerings, in an effort to reach more people in more profound ways.
“We have developed a platform in an effort to help,” he said, noting how he is working to get the book into more people’s hands and also working on a curriculum, an ambassador program, and even a movie.
Connecting non-profit organizations
“We are also working on Positivity Portal…to showcase and connect all non-profits in America using AI,” he said. “We’re going to flood the zone with all the good that’s happening every day in America that our children never see, and that are not taught.
I think this will serve as an important counterbalance to all the negative information they are fed every day.”
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