Maintaining Hope

Lately, we have seen the progress of the past decades evap­o­rat­ing as rights essen­tial to ensur­ing full cit­i­zen­ship for all Americans are under attack. We see a lack of action to reform gun laws — the excuse being a mis­tak­en and his­tor­i­cal­ly inac­cu­rate inter­pre­ta­tion of the Second Amendment — while our chil­dren are being slaugh­tered, and politi­cians con­tin­ue to val­ue guns over our nation’s chil­dren. We see the loss of repro­duc­tive free­dom, book ban­ning, legal­ized bul­ly­ing of trans youth, the whit­tling away of LGBTQ+ rights, and states crim­i­nal­iz­ing drag queens. 

The out­ra­geous­ness of this all cul­mi­nat­ed with offi­cials in the state of Florida deem­ing Michelangelo’s David to be obscene.

I was with a group of folks recent­ly who dis­cussed these issues and the dif­fi­cul­ty for some of us to find light amidst this dark­ness. We as cit­i­zens have pow­er because we elect our lead­ers, but time after time we see the same politi­cians — or those of the same mind­set — elect­ed. When polls demon­strate that the major­i­ty of those sur­veyed do not share the view of these extrem­ists, but those elect­ed con­tin­ue to dis­play loy­al­ty to par­ty over peo­ple, where is the disconnect?

The group dis­cussing these mat­ters shared dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives about what is occur­ring in our cul­ture. Some peo­ple in the group shared opin­ions about the rea­sons for this shift in cul­ture, and oth­ers shared per­son­al reac­tions and feel­ings toward the actions of polit­i­cal lead­ers in cre­at­ing this ero­sion of per­son­al free­dom and equity. 

Now in all mat­ters, I con­sid­er myself to be a real­ist, but I am gift­ed with some­one in my life who is the eter­nal opti­mist, and while this is gen­er­al­ly good for me, I must admit that it can be annoy­ing at times. 

After a lengthy con­ver­sa­tion, the per­son who is always “look­ing on the bright side” point­ed out some great things going on in our com­mu­ni­ty. Many groups, hap­pen­ings, and ini­tia­tives were men­tioned, and I began my own men­tal list of the remark­able things occur­ring in Winchester. There was the sold-out drag show at the Leed’s Center for the Arts, the orga­ni­za­tion of our Local Proud Town group that seeks to sup­port and estab­lish a schol­ar­ship fund for our LGBTQ+ youth, ded­i­cat­ed cit­i­zens who stand up to the library board’s attempts to ban and lim­it access of books, efforts by groups work­ing toward racial rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and equi­ty in our com­mu­ni­ty, and at least one faith com­mu­ni­ty that is accept­ing and affirm­ing of every­one. 

There are agen­cies and church­es work­ing to end food scarci­ty, pro­vide hous­ing, and pro­mote edu­ca­tion, as well as the efforts by so many to pro­vide need­ed treat­ment, ser­vices, and sup­port to save the lives of those suf­fer­ing from addic­tion and to pro­vide treat­ment and sup­ports for peo­ple liv­ing with men­tal illness.

What gives me a mea­sure of com­fort dur­ing these times is to think about the ways in which I can affect change in my own com­mu­ni­ty. The recent Random Act of Kindness week served to remind us that a small ges­ture, even a smile and kind word, has the pow­er to make our world a bet­ter place. 

So, when I feel over­whelmed — as undoubt­ed­ly some of us have or do — the ques­tion is what small thing can I do to make things bet­ter? Then my job is to get up and do it.