We’ve just witnessed the largest mass shooting in US history.

I wish this fact made me feel like the worst of this is behind us. But it doesn’t.

On days like today it is hard to feel like the world is getting safer and less violent, but that’s what the numbers tell us. If we are in fact riding a wave pulling us towards peace and prosperity, there’s also an undertow that we must fight against. Whether it’s U.S. citizens like Omar Mateen pledging allegiance to ISIS to justify mass murder, or simply the daily drumbeat of tragic gun deaths that go unnoticed — on an average day in the U.S., 91 people are killed with guns — the cocktail of fear, ignorance, hatred, bias and easy access to firearms is a deadly one.

Omar Mateen’s hateful, senseless killing reminds us what’s at stake. It reminds us of the push and pull between freedom and security, the tug between hope and fear, the real fight over what the future will hold.

Each of you reading is this is, in some way, engaged in this fight. You are working to support others and improve their lives. You are giving to organizations that are sources of light in today’s darkness. You have committed yourselves to a world in which hatred and senseless violence will never be the norm.

Our only choice, in the midst of grief, is to recommit ourselves to this work: perhaps not to work harder, but to take it all a bit more personally. When we put ourselves on the line a bit more, when we take just a bit more risk — personally, professionally, emotionally, spiritually — we push the boundaries of the change we are making in the world, and in so doing we inspire others to greater heights.

Yesterday morning a colleague reminded the Acumen team of the wisdom of one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott. The backdrop of her celebrated memoir about writing, Bird by Bird, were words of her father to her then 10-year-old brother

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’

Our only choice, when faced with a seemingly insurmountable task — like the task of pushing against a wall of vitriol and fear — is to start.

Here’s to the work you are doing to create light in the darkness.

And here’s to the memory of those who never should have been slain.