On the week of the inauguration, I think it’s safe to say that we are collectively holding our breath for one reason or another. The events earlier this month were certainly impactful on our shared psyche as a nation. In times of social unrest and political division, I think hopelessness can creep into our hearts and start making a home all too easily and without our permission. Buffering against hopelessness cannot be a passive process, it takes effort and work. While of course my area of expertise lies in the mental and emotional tools to support that effort, sometimes I find myself needing my own buffers and resources slightly outside of this field.
Enter Rebecca Solnit, a brilliant essayist and social researcher who scours the world looking for historical and current social evidence to offer a little “hope in the dark,” where we need it most. In this book, she examines the various social and political events that occurred largely during the Bush administration that have continued to set in motion a ripple effect over the past decade. She challenges the stories that have become mainstream that are often used to uphold division and uncovers triumphant stories of deep humanity that are swept under the rug in order to perpetuate hatred.
While it can be challenging to read, Solnit invites us to view apathy and hopelessness as a miseducation. Given the many moments of surprising outcomes that history offers to us, to fall into despair is something she considers naive.
“People have always been good at imagining the end of the world, which is much easier to picture than the strange sidelong paths of change in a world without end.”
She explores various international and historical moments where there was ample reason for despair and paralysis and yet, something else entirely showed up. She invites the reader to consider how the news and media might be motivated to hide these more uplifting stories and the importance of finding these stories and spreading them loudly to combat the dominant narratives that uphold division and paralysis.
“We who had been through the quake were present and connected. Connected to death, to fear, to the unknown, but in being so connected one could feel empathy, passion, and heroism as well. We could feel strongly, and that is itself something hard to find in the anesthetizing distractions of this society.”
So this week, whatever unfolds, I hope you are present, connected and able to find some fragments of hope in the dark.