In October, before the election, I wrote about hope, imagination, and possibility. Read that post again.
I’ve felt a little leery of hope lately. Some of my friends and colleagues have been sleeping poorly. I’ve struggled more with maintaining my sense of optimism while keeping up with and responding to a daily catalog of repressive orders and repealed social services.
Perhaps that’s why tonight’s quote resonated: “Unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.”
Or, as I wrote four months ago, “Not all that has been needs to persist: the oppression that has been need not be.”
Like Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come,” these are faith statements, not fact statements, but the only thing that can transmute them from faith to fact is our work. Human activity in the lived world, human persistence despite backlashes: that’s the change that makes change possible.
More and more it seems to me that hope is less about mood and more about practice. It’s more accessible to me as a verb at times like this when there’s a lot I “just can’t” about but one thing I can do is get up every morning and try again.
