I Get it. Hope Feels Stupid Right Now. Choose it Anyway.

Things are terrible right now: objectively, historically, inarguably, breathtakingly terrible.In fact, the list of atrocities, offenses, and abominations in front of us is too lengthy to document, even if we made that our exclusive waking work (and some of us have been).But does that all mean that hope at this moment is unwise, a fool’s errand, downright stupid?I guess it all depends on how you define hope.I don’t see hope as toxic optimism, an ignoring of the data in front of us; not a burying of our heads in the sands of distraction, or the setting of them adrift upon the clouds of wishful thinking.For me, hope right now is our last remaining thread to sanity: it is a defiant middle finger declaration of war against the overwhelming despair that feels logical.Hope, as best as I can tell, is a steadfast, stubborn refusal to believe that the present is permanent, that life is a perpetual spiral downward, that all is irretrievably lost, that something surprising or beautiful can’t still happen on the horizon of history.Right now, hopelessness is understandable, perhaps even sensible, but we can’t choose hopelessness because that would mean conceding to the mask wearers and the wall builders and the book banners, not only the recent past but the present and future as well.Hopelessness is defeat and resignation; it is a willing surrender to darkness that insults the memory of so many who have courageously made this planet their home long before we ever showed up here.And so hopeless is not an option. We have to choose hope because people of every nationality, religious affiliation, and life circumstance who have preceded us, have experienced all manner of hell during their lifetimes: unspeakable suffering and unthinkable fear, and they would not relent. They faced genocide and slavery and war; endured murderous regimes and malignant dictators and corrupt governments, and yet chose to persevere despite the seeming futility. They made the daily, sometimes hourly decision to speak and live and create and work and resist and love when it proved difficult. We need to do that now.We who inhabit this planet in these days have inherited it from the children, activists, caregivers, soldiers, helpers, and parents; the ordinary people who would not allow themselves to become so despondent or so weary in their present circumstance that they stopped giving a damn or making a life or bending the arc of the moral universe toward justice in any way they were able.Now it’s our turn. This is our moment to spend our fragile and fleeting sliver of space and time here, and for the sake of our predecessors in humanity and for our descendants who will be here after we’re gone—we can’t blow it.We can’t allow our present troubles to overcome us.We cannot be overwhelmed by the pain in our path to the point where we are no longer willing to feel it or respond to it.We can’t wilt in the face of hateful, fearful people who would make the world less diverse and less equitable.We can’t become apathetic or stay silent or sidestep the turbulence of engaging the ugliness outside our doors or on our social media feeds, because the multitudes whose feet traversed this place previously refused to.Facing impossibly dire circumstances, Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”Friends, the present, like the one we sit inside today, the one you inhabit as you encounter these words, is always that space between stimulus and response. In this space, we have one thing: the choices we make.Hope may feel stupid right now. Choose it anyway. Some day, someone who will never know your name will be grateful that you did.Be encouraged.The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe