Go Ahead And Stop Hoping

A few years ago, I wrote an essay called “Go Ahead and Panic.” My general thesis was that people always tell you things will be OK, when we all know they often simply won’t be. So, if I go ahead and let myself take a deep dive into the worst case scenario of a situation, it often calms me down, rather than making me more depressed. I said:

I say feel it. Go all the way down in that big, nasty rabbit hole of doom. Imagine the end of days. Play out your life without a power grid. Lose everything you love, in your mind, in the blink of an eye. Cry if you need to. Scream into the void.

And then come back.

Because none of that was real. Nothing actually happened. Could it get really bad? Yes. Is everything going to be OK? Not in the way we ever think or want it to be. Are WE going to be OK? Most definitely. We already are.

That was during the first Trump presidency and the Coronavirus pandemic. I thought things were bad then, but to be honest, they’re a lot worse now. And here’s what’s killing me this time: Everyone is telling me not to give up hope. As I watch a group of dudes named after a meme take over federal departments and computer systems, as I watch elected officials vote to make the rich richer and the poor fucked, as I watch wildfires burn and cities flood due to irreversible climate change, as I watch people be detained without due process, I’m being told – sometimes even scolded – to not give up hope.

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“Call your senators!”

“Call your representatives!”

“We can stop this! We can turn it around!”

Can we? I don’t know if I believe we can.

In fact, I don’t believe it at all. I think the time for turning the ship around was well before we hit the iceberg. We should never have let it leave the harbor, but we did and here we are. Should the band play on because people are scared? Should we all tell each other it will be OK? What purpose does that serve?

I have been reading Sarah Wilson’s excellent Substack in which she talks about the dangers of “hopium,” and it’s the most refreshing thing I’ve read in a really long time. She talks about how we are living in a post-hope era and how that’s not a bad thing. She talks about how we have to accept what’s happening and prepare for what’s coming. She says when you finally let go of the illusion of this “hope,” you get relief, and God, do I identify with that.

So many of my friends have accused me of being a pessimist, or worse, a nihilist. I like to think I’m a realist. I cannot change what is happening in the world and to the world around me. I can – and here’s the good news – change what I do and how I think about it.

I was sitting in a coffee shop recently with a good friend and we were talking about all of this: outrage fatigue, boycotts, protests, the news in general. And what we both came to was this: It was a beautiful day and we were lucky enough to have money and time to sit in a lovely plant filled coffee shop, drink actual coffee, and to talk about whatever we wanted to without fear of arrest or censure. As women.

If you don’t think I’m going to savor every minute of that experience, you’re wrong.

Life seems very fragile and tenuous and unfair right now, but here’s the thing: It always has been and we’ve just taken it for granted. Every day I take for granted I will wake up and have coffee and walk my dog and that my husband and I will both return home to each other.

In a post-hope world, I don’t take those things for granted anymore. I recognize every day – every experience – for the miracle it really is.

How much longer will I have gas to drive to the mountains? Or good coffee to drink? I don’t know, but I have those things today and I intend to make the most of them.

This may sound like an incredibly privileged position to take, and maybe it is, but I think it’s just plain brave. Like my practice of imagining the worst case scenario, letting myself let go of hope frees me from the demons that have been threatening to beat down my door and my sanity for the past several years.

None of this means I’m not grieving. I am. I’m grieving for me and for you and for the people who are suffering and for the lack of empathy in the world. I’m grieving for a world I thought existed and took for granted.

But grief comes with letting go. I have grieved many things and people. This just happens to be the biggest one of all. And the thing is, when I allow myself to be honest about what’s happening, rather than forcing positivity onto my mindset, I realize I have been grieving all of this for a very long time.

I am lucky enough to be married to a person who is right where I am mentally and emotionally. We talk about all of this daily, about what we can do and how we can help. And to go back to Sarah Wilson, we both agree that kindness and love are paramount to our survival right now, as silly and outdated as they both may seem. It’s so easy to be angry. It’s much harder to try to empathize and love.

So please, I beg you, if you have the means and the ability, do something nice today. Take a walk, go for a swim, enjoy a beverage or a meal. Call that friend you don’t talk to enough. Draw a picture or write something. Watch trashy TV or read a book. Do the things that make you happy today, while you can. And above all, be kind to yourself and each other. We’re all going to need each other a lot in the coming days, weeks, and years.