Against Despair

I stopped reading the New York Times morning report, I stopped reading most news actually. Not because I stopped caring, but, I could feel my insides getting colonized by headlines. The news wasn’t just informing me, it was occupying me. Setting up camp in my ribs.

Every day another dispatch: more lives in peril, more cruelty with a budget, more earth brutalized and people treated like they are disposable. More language used to launder violence into policy. More people taught to mistake punishment for leadership.

It’s exhausting. You’re exhausted. I’m exhausted.

And still - in the throes of absolute chaos, I am reminded - There is love here. There is kindness. There are still hands reaching for each other in the dark. It’s happening right here.

And if I’m being honest, this reminder can irritate me before it saves me. It can feel like a detour from the reality on the ground. Like someone asking you to admire the sunset while the house is on fire. And yes - the house is on fire.

And yet: I refuse to let despair colonize my imagination and heart. I have to cultivate joy and love as fiercely as I curate my outrage.

Outrage is easy. The world delivers it to our doorstep. Outrage is algorithm-friendly. Outrage has a hundred spokespeople. Outrage can even make you feel righteous. But outrage alone, without love, without tenderness, without beauty - eventually hollows you out. It makes the spirit brittle. It turns love into a clenched fist… I don’t want my life to become a clenched fist.

So I’m choosing, deliberately, to train my eyes toward everyday rebellions of love. My neighbors kids turning our sidewalks into cathedrals with chalk. A hummingbird out my window. Another neighbor planting milkweed for monarchs, preparing for a future they may never get to see. A fridge full of food. Two strangers holding a door for each other with the kind of gentleness you can’t legislate out of people. A friend texting, “I’m here,” and meaning it.

These are not small things. These are evidence. Resistance in a different key.

And let me say this plainly: This isn’t denial of the moment. This isn’t naïve optimism. This isn’t shoving daisies in gun barrels and pretending the guns aren’t loaded. This is acknowledging grief and terror and still insisting on seeing beauty. This is choosing to be in relationship with a loving world, not just the story of a collapsing one.

We live in a suffering world - yes. But do we also remember our barista’s name? Do we make eye contact with the unhoused? Do we ask someone how they are doing and truly listen to the answer?

This keeps me from burning out into uselessness. This returns me to my reasons. Helps me remember what I’m fighting for, not just what I’m fighting against. Reminds me what’s worth protecting.

Because despair is what they want from us - despairing people are easier to manage. Hopeless people don’t organize. Numb people don’t dream. Lonely people don’t build. They would love for our imagination to shrink until it can only picture catastrophe. They would love for our hearts to close - because closed hearts don’t connect and connected people are dangerous to any regime that depends on isolation.

So my practice - my discipline - is to keep my heart open. Walking on water is a miracle, sure. But try keeping your heart open. That is resilience, to keep opening our hearts. Keep it open when you’re scared. Keep it open when you’re furious. Keep it open when the world rewards cruelty and calls it strength. Keep it open when the machine is trying to turn us into enemies, numbers, problems, content - this is the work.

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness and love... The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to love now as we think human beings should love, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Tyrannies always fall. History is clear about that. But what takes people down in the meantime, what collapses movements before they even begin, is not only repression, it’s despair. It’s the slow corrosion of spirit.

Liberation requires stubborn, endless love as much as it requires resistance. So: I will be a living loving sanctuary. And if you need my help, like Sade says, I will be by your side.

May we continue to act and love. In small ways. In big ways. In ways that may never be seen or acknowledged. Remembering - the miracle is not walking on water. The miracle is keeping your heart open to love while the world begs you to close it.

Engaged Liberation is a labor of love.

But it is labor. If you love it, support it for less than $5/mo. Thank you!