Where Hope Lives Today
In the past few weeks, during an almost unfathomable period of pure hell in the U.S., I have led four virtual regional roundtables with community leaders across the nation (the final one in the West is on Tuesday), and while I am deeply troubled, I am even more deeply inspired by what I have heard.
First, the pure hell. During this time, we have been witnesses to a presidential debate fiasco, the Breonna Taylor grand jury decision, COVID cases on the rise once more, a total congressional breakdown on providing Americans needed aid, and local public schools opening only to be shuttered, to name a handful of examples.
We all find ourselves living through the “messy middle” of four simultaneous crises—a public health pandemic, economic upheaval, systemic racism and social injustice, and a growing political meltdown—with no end in sight. The individuals I have spoken with in these roundtables, like so many of us today, said they feel anxious, scared, enraged, frustrated, exhausted.
Who can blame them? Who can blame any of us?
And yet during these roundtables there was hope, too. Not the kind of false, naive hope that pretends everything will magically work out for the best. Not the kind of empty catchphrases about how we will all transcend our differences and get along. No, there is real pain and sorrow and fear throughout the nation. Anyone who seeks to dismiss or disregard or deny these emotions fails to truly know what is happening in people’s lives and in the life of our country.
Authentic hope came into these conversations through stories about how people are coming together in communities to ensure that kids don’t fall through the cracks while learning remotely at home. Accounts of how some people and places are having hard conversations about systemic racism and what to do about it. Calls for different groups to come together to reduce siloed efforts and marshal collective resources in smarter, more effective ways.
People like to say that “hope is not a strategy.” That’s true. But when we make an intentional choice to pursue a path of hope, we can create strategies and approaches and efforts that give rise to a new trajectory that offers greater promise and possibility.
The opportunity before us today is not simply to “fix” the problems that plague us; nor is it to find a path back “normal.” Too many of us were already suffering before these crises hit. Too many of us were excluded from the American promise. Too many of us did not have the chances to fulfill our God-given potential.
Let’s be clear: the opportunity before us is to re-imagine and re-create our lives, our communities, and our nation. It is to begin anew. To take action that puts us on a more hopeful path, one that it is more just, inclusive, fair and equitable.
We can only do this together. It requires shared actions rooted in a sense of common purpose. It is through such actions that we will rediscover our sense of agency, our innate capabilities, and our connections to one another.
During this period of hell, the roundtables offer a call for us never to lose sight of the work we must do to create the kind of society that reflects the best of us, and the best in us. And they remind us that this is possible.