Hope is So Out of Fashion

I went to a writers’ conference last week where I had the opportunity to read a sample of my own work to a gathering of aspiring writers, graduate students, and even a few established authors. I agonized about what to select but impulsively chose an essay about hope. (It’s a piece I wrote a few years ago, when it was perhaps a little easier to feel such things.) On this occasion, however, I was unprepared for the emotional response the essay seemed to generate, for it resonated in a palpable way. One young man in particular waited patiently to talk to me at the back of the auditorium, and I have been pondering his comment ever since: “That was such a brave choice,” he said, “because hope…well, hope is so out of fashion.”

I realized he was right. Cynicism reigns and there’s every reason to despair. If you write in a tone too rosy you risk seeming sophomoric and irrelevant. Hope has been hijacked. We need to reclaim it.

It's not that I don’t see what’s going on. I know too well the chronic sense of anxiety and loss that has become the new normal. I have watched while mistakes and miseries have compounded themselves, and there's a permanent lump lodged in my throat. I wonder sometimes if what we can barely remember will turn out to have been the best there ever was. But I know too it is essential to act in hopeful ways even when we're feeling shaky inside.

After the conference I drove along pastoral roads of Marin and Sonoma Counties, past barns and pumpkins and grazing cows. Except for the fact that the weather was nice, it reminded me of places in upstate New York. I headed to Santa Rosa to meet Christine and Donna, special friends from my bicycle days, old friends and dear ones, the kind with whom there's history, the kind who always leave you feeling loved. Christine met me at a coffee shop, pedaling up in sleek black slacks and high heeled shoes. (Righteous Chris, we used to call her -- because she cared a lot and wasn't gonna sit there.) Then the two of us went to Mike and Donna's house, and we lingered in the backyard, and it felt like a homecoming, although quieter than in days of old -- none of us can fathom how the kids grew up so fast. Donna made up a cozy bed for me in the downstairs room that used to belong to one of the boys, and I slept as soundly as a child.

On the way home the next day, I met up with Jacquie, another renowned woman of two wheels. With her dredlocks and feathers and pink sunglasses, bearing gifts of figs and funny fruit, she brought life and color to the the empty Sunday street. "I'm declaring myself beautiful," Jacquie said, "and so should you." Jacquie doesn't waste her time being shy. She's right there: a happening, an adventure, a quirky affirmation.

And I thought about the fact that we are constantly creating ourselves, and how, if we work at it, we can become works of art. I know that sounds corny (there it is again) but conscious choice is surely a factor in determining what effect we have upon the world. And it takes some effort to walk against the wind and whistle in the dark and throw yourself into a cause, big or small, as though you can make a difference. But that kind of spirit acquires momentum and if it doesn't turn tides at least it touches lives.

A few years ago my students and I interviewed a delightful lady named Marjorie Scribner who was born in 1908. (You can read her entire interview on Zacate Canyon.) She spoke of the two World Wars that had taken place in her lifetime, as well as the astonishing technological and social changes she had witnessed. Here is something important she concluded, and she'd had plenty of time to observe:

“In some cases things look worse today, but as long as people are concerned about them, they're gonna get better. I think people are actually more involved in some ways than they were a couple of generations ago. There are human rights organizations like Amnesty International, and there are various organizations working to preserve the planet instead of destroying the environment... So you organize small groups, that's how it starts. Even just two people, one person speaking out, and there you have it. People are good. There are far more good people in the world than bad. We have to seek them out.”

Well, I'm seeking. And I’m finding.

And sometimes I feel a funny flutter in my heart. It’s quaint and out of fashion, but I’m going to give it some room to grow.