And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves, growing on the trees, just as things grow in time-lapse movies, I have the familiar conviction that life is beginning over again with the spring.
This time around, we are not going to let it pass us idly by. This one crazy, painful, purgatory of a year has instilled a sense of urgency and fragility in its survivors. They recognize the ancient truth more clearly, through the fog than a lot of people have for a very long time - life is very short, that it will end is the only guarantee. Hope might be the correct response to the human condition, but this past year has in equal measure disabused us of our unbridled optimism as it has inspired confidence in humankind.
A universal enemy was not enough for us to unite as a species, we were still beset by obstacles and opportunities. We had no shortage of demagogues who would strip communities of a fighting chance at survival, if it meant some transient gain was in the offing for them.
No, progress is not guaranteed, positive change is not a given, our survival as a species is not a certainty. Equity, equality, and justice are not the natural byproduct of progress, the arc of the universe does not do auto-pilot very well, it needs to be bent in the correct direction because self-interest, tribalism, and survival-instinct-hacking are mighty foes that have the advantage of being the path of least-resistance, even if it is out of guile for the few and out of desperation for the many.
But hope indeed is a thing with feathers That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea* -
and I've heard it in the midst of a devastating global pandemic. Even when we felt alone, we weren’t really, because we were a part of a vast and deeply interconnected us. It is true that the world has been getting better at an astonishing pace by every conceivable global metric#. It is also true that stories of kindness, and generosity, of going above and beyond were not hard to find in 2020. Good news - whether it is the slow creep of reduction in instances of preventable communicable diseases like polio or the fact that most charities received a record amount of small donations in the midst of a global recession do not make their way to either the parchment or the pixels of our non-stop news because it is not urgent, and not clickbaity enough. Nevertheless, it is true. Every time we think as a species we have measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we just need to look around -albeit at the not easy-to-find but omnipresent instances-, and we are reminded that capacity may well be limitless. T.S. Elliot famously wrote that light is the visible sign of the invisible light, human desire to do good, to be good is that invisible light for me. We just need to keep working toward a more perfect world, not just for our tribe (however we may define that), but for all tribes.
I have learned that certainty is a lie, the world is dynamic, fleeting, and ever-changing, we just need to open our eyes to its maddening pace, treasure every moment, leave every moment behind, and go work to fight for and build a world that we can be proud of. After all, we are capable of greatness, we are made of star-stuff.
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