HOPE

Hope

The other night as I was laying in bed, I do what I always do before falling asleep: I pray.  My prayers consist of thanking God for things, and then when I know people are experiencing hardships-I ask him to send them his grace, strength, and light.  I found myself praying very hard for this country, praying that everyone that is hurting and angry be able to receive the love they need to move through the pain they feel. I reflected upon how much police officers and their families are hurting, how people of color are hurting, how Armenian’s are hurting, how the LGBTQ community is hurting, how the earth is hurting, and as I kept thinking about it, my list got longer and longer…it became really clear: EVERYONE is hurting right now.  

Then the word HOPE came into my mind.

Where has that gone? 

Everyone right now is SO UP IN ARMS RED WITH ANGER about EVERY LITTLE THING. Nobody is getting along, nobody is being kind, everyone is pointing the finger at somebody else…and all of that stems from hurt.  This collective hurt is born from a complete lack of hope.

Remember when quarantine started? Remember this post that kept circulating?

Remember when we all were so thrilled how wild animals were rejoicing in our national parks, about how quiet our streets were, how clean our air felt due to the lack of cars on the road? REMEMBER THE HOPE WE FELT?!

We TRULY believed we’d emerge from our homes more connected and more grateful, than when we locked ourselves away.

But pretty quickly, that hope melted into frustration, which then morphed into fear, which has now grown into pure rage.  We rage at the president, we rage at those with different beliefs, we rage at your own friend who is posting about BLM, we rage at law enforcement, we rage at our neighbors, rage, rage, rage.

And I FEEL YOU. I feel that rage too. I feel that frustration. I feel that caution fatigue. I feel that deep heartache.

I FEEL YOU. I HEAR YOU. I SEE YOU. 

But I wonder…aren’t you tired of feeling all that rage all the time?

Isn’t it EXHAUSTING being so angry?

I don’t want that question to be misconstrued as me encouraging inactivity. We can stay informed, we can still vote, we can still make a difference without being so angry.  In fact, I remember a time when I was marching in the streets of Los Angeles with my friend Sara Ann chanting “Si Se Puede” feeling not rage, but HOPE. So much so that I had HOPE tattooed on my body…and do you know what that collective HOPE brought? IT BROUGHT CHANGE. The year was 2008. Our hope did that. Not our rage. We took to the streets with love, with kindness, with HOPE.

I recalled a conversation I listened to years ago on a podcast about how we behave during traumatic events. How often countries that are war torn, eventually once the war is over, actually MISS the community there was during the war.  When things happen-like 9/11, or Katrina, or COVID (those first two weeks), we COME TOGETHER.  The racist and homophobic housewife driving her boat around rescuing people stranded on their roofs during a flood doesn’t refuse to save the Latina lesbian on her roof, she doesn’t ask who anyone voted for, SHE FILLS UP HER BOAT WITH THOSE IN NEED.  Historically, we rally together as a human race in times of turmoil, and yet during what truly is the most traumatic time the world has experienced in our lifetimes (those of us under 40), most of us are not filling up our boats. We get in ours, and we just scream at everyone else about how wrong they are. How they deserve to have their house flooded, to swim if they want to live, or even worse…we just drive by them and IGNORE THEM, leaving them to die. 

What happened?

I wonder that a lot. Where did it take the turn it’s taken? There has always been division in this country, that’s honestly what our country was built upon. But somewhere along the line in the last 5 years people have stopped reaching, and instead hurl rage, across the aisle at one another. 

What if we, just for this month, decided to stop with the rage? Stop with the insults? Stop with the generalizations, the click bate, the hate? Can we commit to spending 30 days finding HOPE and sharing that HOPE with anyone and everyone we can?

I hope. I hope for myself. I hope for the sake of my son and his future and the world he is going to grow up in. I hope. I hope for you. I hope. Will you hope with me?