I’m so tired I cannot decide on a photo to place here.
The pandemic is exhausting. The news is draining. We can’t trust anything we hear or see. We spend our days in front of screens, our brains numb with the effort of it all. Bleak, I know. It’s gray and it’s been raining all day, so I will blame the weather for some of my melancholy.
This afternoon, I met with a group of women who are challenged with fundraising for small non-profits, convened by one of the thought leaders in our space. We’re all challenged in much the same way, made all the more difficult by the pandemic and its economic reality. When we were closing, one of the women mentioned that her normally “Debby Downer” friend was actually very optimistic about the final quarter of 2020, whereas she, who is quite optimistic, felt the opposite. “Oh, no,” she said, “it’s not going to be good. Not for a while.” She was so surprised by the role reversal, but it was very clear to me.
We are afraid to be optimistic. We are afraid to be hopeful. We are all terrified that the worst will indeed happen and we do not want to jinx the possibility for good.
We are longing for the days of unreserved joy, but too traumatized by the events of the last four years to dare to hope for it. We remember how sure we were that this would not, could not happen. And the horror as we watched the map turn redder and redder and redder. How we all went to sleep that night, praying it was just a bad dream.
For many, the last four years, underscored by the last seven months, it has been nothing short of a never-ending nightmare.
No wonder we’re exhausted. Trying to maintain sanity, dignity, poise and intellect while confronted with the reality that is ours takes energy many of us do not have. Yet, we do it. Day after day.
I’ve taken to running electoral vote scenarios and watching Senate race polls, pinning my non-hopeful unoptimistic non-dreams on the mathematical gymnastics that will almost surely guarantee that we’ll be woken from the collective nightmare we’ve been living in and have some relief from the onslaught of terrifying consequences of greed, hubris and downright evil.
I’m a realist. I know that the possibility of hope and decency will not automatically fix all the ills that have been laid bare these past months, years. I know that once hope is restored, the real work begins and it will be contentious and difficult and sometimes painful. Complacency is not an option anymore if we want to have a better country to live in, if we want to be better citizens and better neighbors to one another.
May we be able to rest at night, soon.
If you have not yet done it, make a plan to vote. https://www.vote.org/