Day 46: On Hope, Part 1

I lost count of the days in my writing challenge, but I do know I missed three hours altogether. Last Tuesday and Wednesday I skipped writing when I was sick, plus this Monday when I was tired. I also overslept 30 minutes today, but I think I can still fit in one hour total.

The headlines these days are truly bleak. Half of Europe will contract coronavirus in the next two months. Death rates continue to rise in the US, albeit on a slightly less steep curve than infections. Delta airlines operating down 3,000 people due to COVID. 62,000 students and staff test positive in the Los Angeles Unified School District, before its reopening continues as scheduled. Vaccine trials for the under 5 set delayed and extended — again. 

Parents confronting this next surge feel “dead inside” (um, this comports with what I have seen and heard from parents lately). Teachers planning their exits from the profession en masse (yep, also checks out) and robots filling in for classrooms teachers (this last one was satire, but it feels true most days as well!).

I've been reading a book by Mark Manson called Everything is F*cked, and although written pre-COVID, it still seems a bit on the nose.

At any rate, his key take away is that only hope can combat all the world’s destruction and devastation.

Hope things might improve. Hope what you do makes a positive difference for someone else. Hope gets us out of bed in the morning and greases the rails as we move through our days.

A laser focus on hope (or perhaps just a 5-degree shift in orientation) makes the difference between feeling fluid, agile and able to contend with the challenges of this fucked up world, and becoming brittle and mired in bullshit. And it feels so difficult — especially when the areas in which we might dare to hope reflect ample disappointment, heartbreak and disillusionment from the past.

But today, I will try to focus on hope, tighten my aperture on the information I allow in (read: no news!) and shift my focus to what's hopeful. 

We'll see how it goes.