Happy New Year, I say softly, as it all falls apart around us.
The worst will happen, friends. It just always does, it is right now. People will die, as people do. We will be lied to. We will be powerless to make the change we know needs making. We will watch in horror as people are abducted from our city streets. We will see headlines of people being bombed, of children dying under rubble and clouds of dirt taller than the buildings that fell atop them. America will rot from the inside, like a mold that spread in the bits of the White House torn down in haste to build ballrooms of gilded gold.
The worst will happen, it just will, and so we must decide how we will go forward when it does.
We must decide, now, as we begin this new year fresh, as we turn calendar pages and marvel at the 6 where the 5 once stood at the end of the year we write. We must decide, and to decide, we must choose. We can wallow and cave, we can forget ourselves and the power we hold, we can redefine words in ways that allow for that apathy. Or, we can do something else.
We can hope.
Hope is the antidote I’ve always sold, like rainmaker of old peddling wares from rickety crates with drawers upon drawers holding magic cures for malignant things.
We know the state of things by now. We may numb ourselves to it, may distract or deny, scroll past the fires and just tell ourselves “it’s not that bad” to help ourselves to sleep. We can pretend and avoid admitting, harsh and jagged edged as it may be, but there is only one way to stay human through this time: Facing the truth and fighting on.
You know about the bombs, you see the political chaos, the financial stressors, the humanity waning day by day. Still we scroll, as the rot of these times is somehow more an internal one than anything else. It’s the daily disappointments, the overwhelming exhaustion of our helplessness that undoes us. It’s the extra due diligence we’re forced to spend to fact check the headlines shared by those in our families that do not see things the way we see things, that somewhere along the way took the other path. It’s the sigh and silent resignation when we see those with the least losing the most, the reservoir of tears so nearly dry because we’re just so tired from mourning. It’s the lies on the television, spread over and over again, but more, it’s the understanding that the media knows that we know, they simply don’t care.
It’s the exhaustion, more than all things, isn’t it? Aren’t we so tired from the work of having to truly believe in the good, when every notification from every source, is fighting against you?
There’s something they don’t tell you about Hope, and by they I mean everyone BUT me as I’ve rattled on about Hope being a verb longer than almost anything, and that it is, above almost all other things, a god damn chore.
In a world of macro-scaled tragedies, we’ve no choice but to accept this chore, but before doing so, understanding that the scale of our response can directly dictate the potency of our actions. Hope as a verb, hope as an action, hope as a decision made in the face of darkness to instead shine a light. Hope as antidote to the poison we’re being drip fed by every screen, every speaker, every headline, every soundbite. We cannot stop the bombs that fall, cannot yet unlock the handcuffs around the wrists of our immigrant neighbors, but it doesn’t mean we are powerless.
What of Hope in a one mile radius? What of hope in the places we can touch with our tired fingertips? What of hope that aims not to save the world at large, but the lives around you—the watering of a plant, the holding of a bird after window strike, the hand out to the neighbor, the food offered to those on street corners or under blankets huddled against the cold.
Hope is volunteering when you feel your most useless.
Hope is showing up for one person when the world feels its most impossible.
Hope is making art, when the world tells you to get a real job.
Hope is protest. It’s presence instead of silent acquiescence.
Hope is refusing to harden. Softness is defiance in this world of ours.
Hope, above all, is a chore.
Somehow, in a society where performance has eclipsed it, where cynicism goes viral, sincerity has become a weakness. Saying what you mean is working in hope, refusing to hide your true feelings behind that cynical detachment is working in hope. Vulnerability is the consequence in hope work, and to this I say good, I say please, I say YES, for above all, vulnerability is quite possibly the ultimate proof of life.
We can hope, but to do so we have to try so hard to avoid the temptation to look away. This system is designed for rot, planned obsolescence and falling apart is the purpose. It wants to keep you entertained, horrified, it wants you conditioned to accept instead of reject, to bend instead of break away. Somehow, it teaches you that self-care is abandonment, that you’re to leave the news on, to scroll on and on and on until thumbs are as numb as your heart sometimes feels.
I ask today, at the dawn of this new year, for a commitment to wild, feverish, defiant HOPE. I ask you to allow yourselves to bear witness to the pains of this place for 5 minutes each day, but then, but then, aggressively forcing yourself to commit to joy—yours, but mostly that of others—for the rest of the hour that comes. Control your exposure, prove you’re still alive and vulnerable to what’s vulnerable in others, prove you’re still watching, but refuse to allow yourself to sink, to drown.
Hope is a chore, hope is a labor, and I’m inviting you here, today, to commit yourself to it. It’s everyday work, it’s necessary, it’s vital, and it’s what we do here. If this resonates, you belong here. If you read this, you there at the end of your rope clinging to the knots you’ve tied, and feel seen, you belong here. This is not a place we will only speak of bad news, but this is not a place we will sugar gloss over the truth. This is where we come together, as one thing, and discuss the daily maintenance of our own internal compasses. This is where we show up, week after week, to do that work together. Going forward, for this year at my own expense, I’m opening the comments section to everyone. I am so hopeful I won’t lose paid subscribers in doing so, as it’s ONLY through your patronage I’m able to keep this place alive, but I want more people to do this work here. I want this community to Grow, and to spread, and to find new people in new places that feel as tired as we do.
I want more people to HOPE.
If you are weary, weak, and so tired of doom-scrolling your way through another day, if you are ready to pick up the tools, the community, the magic, please, sign up below. The work starts right now.
Happy New Year.
All will fall apart
and you will fall to your knees.
Hope and stand again.
