How wise and human and beautiful.
Thank you, Mo Husseini.
🙏💜 Molly
Last night I attended (virtually) a screening of The Path Forward (the short documentary I co-directed with Julie Cohen) and one of the questions I was asked was about hope and how do you maintain it and... well... I've been thinking about that all night (because DORK!)...
I think a lot of us are drowning right now. I know I am. Some days are fine and other days are... FUUUUUUCCCKKKKK.... you wake up to immediate and sheer weight of everything... Gaza, Iran, ICE, the rule of Law, the Orange Turd's latest assault on democracy... you name it... and it feels like someone's dropped a massive weight on your chest as soon as you open your eyes... It's a lot.
One of the things that have kept me sane through it all is this thing that the amazing Mariame Kaba said: "Hope is a discipline. It's not a fuzzy feeling. You have to put in energy and time and you have to be clear-eyed and you have to hold fast to having a vision."
And yeah. She's right. But also... some days that is a really hard thing to live up to... Some days discipline is not at all what I've got. Some days all I've got is anger and exhaustion and rage and a low-grade despair that is just kind of humming away underneath everything.
My friend and mentor Bruce Mau likes to say that pessimists are welcome and optimists are welcome... but cynicism is not allowed. And I'll be honest and say that I thought that was a little glib and a little too neat... but the older I get the more I see the profound wisdom in that. Because pessimists and optimists are still in the room. They're still engaged. They have a perspective on the outcome but they still think it matters.
A cynic is just... done. "We're fucked, why bother." And I get it. There's an appeal to that. Cynicism is 'cooler-than-thou' and oh-so-very appealing to a Gen-Xer for all that... It feels smart. Like you've figured something out that the rest of the world still doesn't see. It's loud-quitting in an all-black outfit and chic Persols. But, man, appealing or cool or not, quitting and sitting it out when the stakes are so immense just feels so fucking wrong. No matter the justification. No matter the effort.
So what do you do? I don't know. I'm figuring it out in real time like everybody else. But the things that help me (and yes, I fail despite them all) is the idea of doing literally anything. ANYTHING. Even tiny stuff. Even stuff that feels pointless. Because doing something. Even something small, breaks the spell of the doom scroll and the catastrophism in a way that wallowing and thinking about doing stuff never does.
And finding other people. That's the big one for me, honestly. I'm an introvert and don't always remember that even an introvert needs people. Because the feeling of being the "only person" who sees how bad things are or the "only person" who hasn't checked out or the "only person" who hasn't lost their ever-loving mind... that feeling will fucking eat you alive. And the only thing I've ever found that helps is just being in community with others who also refuse to quit. Even if it's a stupid zoom or a basement in a church or a cafe or whatever... because that room gives you something that can't you can't get on your own... the sense that you're not fucking crazy and that other people see it too and we'll get through it together.
Maybe that's hope for me. The unglamorous unsexy hope that looks like just showing up and being together... pessimists and optimists alike and working on shit no matter how small.
Find your people. Keep 'em close. It's made all the difference for me... and if you haven't found yours yet... keep looking... cause they're probably looking for you and need you as much as you need them.
Much love to everyone (except the fucking cynics (just kidding... love you too (kinda)))
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