Finding hope

Sitting in a dance hall in Austin, Texas last week, one that I went to more than a few times back in the 1990s, I contemplated hope.

I had several moments of severe hopelessness as a teen. What got me through those times were unexpected, wonderful things: friends I realized loved me fiercely, compliments on my work and character from people I respected and didn't realize I had impressed until that moment, job opportunities and what I call experience opportunities: offers to go to an amazing stage show, or concert, or an invitation to a dinner party that turned out to be full of fascinating people, or being introduced to a beautiful place.

I didn't struggle with hope nearly so much in my 30s and most of my 40s - I felt pretty good those years. My job, my friends and my life experiences all brought me consistent joy. Even in horrible moments - and there were many - I still had hope.

But not now, in my 50s. Not in the last 10 years, in fact. Those things that came my way as a teen and in my 20s that kept me going in those times of severe hopelessness, those things that all brought me consistent joy, haven't been happening much in the last 10 years. I've moved so much I've ended up in a place where none of my friends are nearby, and the state where I live is notoriously unfriendly - 10 years here, I'm still disparaged as an outside. I've struggled with unemployment. Live music performances with terrific musicians and quality sound systems are quite hard to find. Delightfully eccentric, friendly people are hard to find here.

And as I sat in that beloved dance hall in Austin, Texas, feeling oh-so-at home in a building amid a city I could never live in again (too big, too hot, too much traffic), I realized I'm going to have to cultivate hope. I'm going to have to plant seeds and take care of those little seedlings and help them grow. I'm going to have to think of hope as a muscle that needs to be exercised and built. I'm going to have to work at this.

Hope has always been, to me, the belief, the expectation, that good things will happen, that bad things will be overcome, and that joy is always a possibility. But now, I struggle with a belief that bad things will be overcome. I'm not sure anymore. The glee with which children are separated from their parents and put in cages at the border, the glee with which people applaud and cheer as the President lies, disparages people who don't support him, says racist and sexist things and mocks the Rule of Law, the dedication they all have to undo environmental protections that help ALL of us, and future generations, the dedication they have to prevent as many people as possible from voting... glee and dedication that cannot be countered with reason nor compassion... altogether, it has undone most of my hope.

But I can believe, and do believe, that there will always be people who don't want this to happen and are going to put forth effort to counter it, even if they are in the minority. Sometimes they will win, sometimes they will lose. I have control over how I participate in that struggle. And I've asked myself over and over: would you rather be on the "winning" side or the "right" side? And my answer is always the same: I'd rather be on the "losing" side, if that side is the side of compassion and reason. And I don't know why that is, it just is.

I also believe there are still good things in life, like dance halls in Austin, Texas.

So, I'm going to work on cultivating hope. I'm going to read more books (already am, in fact). I'm going to actively look for good people doing good things. I'm going to celebrate even one person I encounter after seeing a thousand cheering fascists. I'm going to celebrate even one person dissenting or questioning. I'm going to look around at the mostly-empty audience space of other people enjoying a concert or movie I'm also enjoying and I'm going to take comfort in however many people are also there. I'm going to walk up to people tabling at street markets and thank them for being there. I'm going to leave poorly-supported, poorly-managed volunteering gigs with no guilt.

And since there aren't dance halls where I live, I'm going to fill my house with music, every day, and my house will be the dance hall I crave. No one can see me in my cowboy boots and hat, dancing with my dog, and even if they could, I don't care.

Happy 2020

When I started this blog, I hoped to be able to write just 52 blogs - one for every week. I thought if I ever reached that milestone, I'd just go back and read a blog a week for the rest of my life - my own weekly sermons.

Well, I now have 157 blogs, more than enough to read one every week for THREE YEARS.

If you have ever been a churchgoer, you know just how often preachers recycle sermons. Some just have one year's worth they trot out year-after-year. And here I am with three year's worth of my own atheist sermons!

The church across the street for me went up for sale last year, and I joked that I was going to buy it and open a Temple of Ethics, Reason & Humanity. Sadly, I didn't have the $1 million to buy the church, and an evangelical group that uses drums in their services bought it. Huge bummer, I know. I didn't have the money - but I had the material!

What to say as I start 2020? I start the year with being happy to not believe in the supernatural, fulfilled and content to live in a universe so much bigger and full of so many more possibilities than anything any religion teaches. I start the year knowing that I have very likely crossed the halfway point in my life, and wanting to make the most out of my very good health and stable economic situation. I start the year hoping I can find the strength to be kind when I don't feel like being kind, to be helpful to others when I really don't feel like being helpful, to work hard when I really don't feel like working hard, because doing those things are necessary to getting through this thing we call life.