Last Train Out with Faith Adedokun: Hope is not a luxury, it's a lifeline
It's Friday afternoon as I sit at my computer, wrapping up the week and looking into the weekend. It usually means making a list of all the aspirational but desperately unrealistic things I hope to get done over what is always a too-brief weekend.
t's always bunny-hopping from the want-to-dos to the must-dos until the inevitable case of the Mondays shows up. But I can't help but feel like all of this, the rhythm of life, the doing, the getting things done that we're all party to is so much harder these days.
It's been much harder for a while because we are compelled to follow through all of life as usual as the world around us gets darker and darker, more and more desperate. Most days, I'm out here cosplaying the concept of being a high-functioning adult. Trying to keep myself busy enough -- productive enough to edge out what has become an intermittent front of hopelessness seeping in from all sides. I don't even have to name the litany of occurrences that heap this despair. For many of us, I would say most of us, it's all too present, lurking in the corners of our often-feigned functionality.
It's enumerated, even if not always with accuracy and clarity, each time we turn on the TV, peruse the news, or scroll through social media: war, conflict, decay, disaster. And some days, it just feels like too much to continue to care about the mundanity that makes up the medley of weeks and weekends.
"Gotta remember to grab paper towels at the grocery store." "Can't clock out until I send that last super important e-mail." "Do I have all the documents to file my taxes on time?" "Wait, do the kids have school on Friday? Was it this Friday or next that they're off?"
Don't get me wrong, these things are important, but oh-so-difficult to place in the context of global calamity, multi-front system failures, despair creeping in through cracks you didn't know existed. So, we fight: We push it back, it creeps in, we push it back, we doom scroll, and the cycle repeats.
Anyone who knows me knows I love a good quote. Yesterday, I stumbled upon this one, stored in my phone's "hopeful quotes" folder as I searched for one to help me stymie the particular melancholy I was feeling at that moment. It's by environmentalist Jarod K. Anderson.
"We seldom admit the seductive comfort of hopelessness. It saves us from ambiguity. It has an answer for every question: 'There's just no point.'; hope, on the other hand, is messy. If it might all work out, then we have things to do. We must weather the possibility of happiness."
"Bingo!" I thought. That's it, the explanation for the mercurial and emotional back and forth hard baked into existing in such times. Despair gives definitive (though false) answers. Hope demands meaningful action. But both are hard when you're tired, right?
But among many things, I'm a South Carolinian. And in my humble opinion, we have the best state mottos of them all. If you don't know it or haven't brushed up on your Latin in a minute, I'll share it with you. It's twofold: "Animis Opibusque Parati" and "Dum Spiro Spero." The first meaning "Prepared in Mind and Resources," and the second meaning "While I Breathe, I Hope." "Dum Spiro Spero" is the one that always gets me, though. Because though, at times, I am so deeply tempted to respond to the siren call of cynicism, I am also acutely aware of the truth of that statement, not just for myself, but for all of us. The very reality of our breath, our continued existence, is both a call to and declaration of hope.
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Yes, some days, it's hard for me to care about reports and analyses at work when there is so much active calamity around me. But it's precisely then that I have to remember that though life is often about choices and trade-offs, it is a false dichotomy I present myself when I believe that I have to choose between caring about if I've picked up a present for my best friend’s daughter’s second birthday, and the reality of multiple active genocides.
Despair says, "Choose me; I've got the answer to this (falsely framed) question." But hope, hope says, "No baby, you don't have to choose to do anything but to keep going and keep trying."
That doesn't give me concrete answers, but it does give me, give us, space to keep on keeping on and knowing all our efforts, no matter how small, to stay alive on this crazy planet are tiny collective whispers of hope.
I don't know what reminds you to believe, to feel brave when everything is awful. But whatever those things are, find them and do them. Do it today or whenever you can carve a moment for yourself on the busy list of daily tasks we must endure. But find it and lean into it. For now, I will leave you with one of mine, which (nerd alert) is watching The Lord of the Rings.
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But, whenever I'm short on nine hours to watch the whole thing, I often fast forward to Théoden's pre-battle speech at the walls of Minas Tirith, or Aragorn's rousing speech at the Black Gates.
"Hold your ground, hold your ground! Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me! A day may come when the courage of men fails. When we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day, we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!"
So, dear friends, I bid you, stand. Even if it's on wobbly legs, stand. Because hope is not a luxury — it's a lifeline. And whether we always feel it or not, Dum Spiro Spero.
This article originally appeared on Herald-Journal: Last Train Out with Faith Adedokun: Hope is a lifeline, not a luxury
