1. Rescuing the Kumbaya Moment

Making "work life" work for the touchy-feely, the wishy-washy, the nerdy, and the meek

👋 Hi there, this newsletter is a production of Bonfire, a brand and storytelling company, helping businesses and individuals embrace creativity. And if you want to dive deeper, get in touch with us for 1:1 coaching or 1:many consulting.

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Musically, [Kumbaya] came to be thought of as a children’s campfire song, too simple or too silly for adults to bother with. Politically, it became shorthand for weak consensus-seeking that fails to accomplish crucial goals. Socially, it came to stand for the touchy-feely, the wishy-washy, the nerdy, and the meek.

~ Stephen Winick, Library of Congress Blogs

There’s a reason why we named Bonfire’s official company newsletter what we did. It wasn’t just the obvious allusion to what you might do while sitting around an actual bonfire; it was also to reclaim from capitalist/patriarchal-inflected cynicism the idea that a softer, kinder, more collective working world is incompatible with Real Big Boy Business. Or rather, it was to reclaim the idea that cultivating that world is in any way less important than traditional markers of corporate success. 

How Kumbaya became a joke

“Kumbaya” has a complicated history and murky origin story, best outlined in this thorough article found on the Library of Congress website. The words “kum ba yah” are a transcription of a spoken dialect of African American English meaning “come by here.” And indeed, many versions of the song exist where the lyric “come by here” is sung instead. 

The song is, at its base, a heartfelt plea to divinity. An entreaty for grace and mercy. Thanks to its proliferation among camping enthusiasts across the world, its widespread popularity with the Girl and Boy Scouts of America, and dozens of recordings by folk revival artists in the middle of the last century, it also came to stand for inclusion and belonging, for gathering around what is quite literally a source of warmth, light, and life, and for recognizing our commonalities instead of our differences. 

This is an idealized and over-simplified portrait of the world, certainly. And it led to “join hands and sing Kumbaya” becoming a metaphor meaning to superficially and unproductively ignore our differences and get along, which then led to the coining of the term “Kumbaya moment”—aka “an event at which such naïve bonding occurs.”

But if we can “reasonably” and even “admirably” strive for the apparently limitless growth purported by corporate culture and entrepreneurial influencers—an over-simplified ideal if ever there was one—then why is it laughable to pursue a gentler and more emotionally resonant working world? 

There is no Work Life vs. Real Life

People talk about their Work Life vs. their Real Life as if these are two separate existences. As if when you clock in or sign on, you enter some magical state of suspended animation where your life is not actually passing you by at the same (alarming) clip. Where being your authentic self is somehow unimportant and optional or even unwelcome, and where what you do doesn’t “count” in the same way it does in your Real Life, with your “real” family and friends and community.

We hate to break it to you, but there is no Work Life and Real Life. It is all Real Life, because it’s the one and only life you get to live. 

At Bonfire, we decided to invoke Kumbaya to recenter value on the things that we personally believe should matter more in the workplace, because we reject the compartmentalization that so much of corporate life encourages. There are a lot of different ways to pursue this reintegration. You’ve probably heard about concepts like bringing your “whole self” to work, about the increasing scrutiny on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging practices, the emphasis on work-life balance and flexible working arrangements, about mental health and wellness benefits becoming more common, states attempting to pass stronger protections for workers… There are many paths to this summit. Some operate on political vectors. Some organizational. Some social. Some personal. 

We’ve chosen to start this newsletter to agitate—with kindness and hopefully humor—at the personal and sometimes organizational levels. We’re for individuals looking to show up in a more connected way at work, and we’re for leaders looking to create that kind of environment for their teams or organizations.

We do this believing that while almost all of us participate in the system that quite literally asks us to trade time—our most precious and irreplaceable commodity—for money that is supposed to enable us to spend the balance of our time in more meaningful ways, we are still missing out on presence and purpose and belonging and joy at and through work because we’ve been conditioned to be skeptical of these so-called Kumbaya moments. Moments when our humanity is on display, when we’re called to be our most open-hearted selves. 

What Kumbaya means to us

Like we said, there are a lot of ways to do this. But from our little campsite on the internet, we’re choosing to do so by helping people develop a stronger connection to their inherent creativity, because we believe that bringing more creativity to your work life is an instant way to feel more connected, more engaged, and more alive in your work. You don’t have to be an artist or a designer or a visionary. You don’t have to learn how to paint or do interpretive dance. You can simply bring a newfound creative lens to whatever work you’re already doing, and it can be transformational.

So give us your touchy-feely, your wishy-washy, your nerdy, meek, and over-hustle-cultured masses. There are a lot of us, so gather ’round.

Kumbaya,

Shannon & Kevan

Co-founders @ Bonfire