I need to show up, and I need to nurture the spark of hope.
The only sure way to ensure failure is to stop trying. The important part of trying isn't how hard I try or how good I am at it--the important part of trying is to to keep showing up. Even when I don't see progress, even when it doesn't feel successful, even when I feel small and powerless and foolish, I need to keep showing up.
I show up at work when I go in on Monday morning even when I feel like a useless bureaucrat in a faceless machine. I show up when I keep talking about empathy and humility, even when budgets and policies and processes conspire year after year to attend only to process metrics and things that can be tightly quantified, and when resistance to change seems immovable.
I show up at home when I keep the communication lines open with my family, even when we're angry with each other. And I show up when I make time for personal connections, even when there's something more "productive" to do. I show up when I stop talking long enough to listen.
I show up in the world when I canvas to get out the vote, even though I tremble at the thought of knocking on doors and talking with strangers. And I show up when I keep doing little things to decrease my carbon footprint, even though my little piece of the carbon footprint won't make or break the future. I show up in the world when I make music, even if it's not very good and I'm afraid of embarrassment.
When things are particularly hard--at work, and home, or in the world, and I temporarily lose hope, showing up keeps me in the game until hope returns. And it does more than that, because if I ever stop showing up, then hope's never coming back. Showing up is an invitation to hope--it's a way to hold out the possibility that hope will return.
None of us can be constantly hopeful. We all sometimes succumb to the brutal evidence that we're all going to hell in a hand basket. And yet…
Hope is what makes the better world possible. If we keep the vision of the better place alive, we can find our way there. The timing may be lousy--we all want the better place sooner. And there is so much pain in the time between the dark present and the bright future. But the long run counts. In the long run, we'll get there.
In the short term, let's keep showing up.
I show up in the world when I canvas to get out the vote, even though I tremble at the thought of knocking on doors and talking with strangers. And I show up when I keep doing little things to decrease my carbon footprint, even though my little piece of the carbon footprint won't make or break the future. I show up in the world when I make music, even if it's not very good and I'm afraid of embarrassment.
When things are particularly hard--at work, and home, or in the world, and I temporarily lose hope, showing up keeps me in the game until hope returns. And it does more than that, because if I ever stop showing up, then hope's never coming back. Showing up is an invitation to hope--it's a way to hold out the possibility that hope will return.
None of us can be constantly hopeful. We all sometimes succumb to the brutal evidence that we're all going to hell in a hand basket. And yet…
Hope is what makes the better world possible. If we keep the vision of the better place alive, we can find our way there. The timing may be lousy--we all want the better place sooner. And there is so much pain in the time between the dark present and the bright future. But the long run counts. In the long run, we'll get there.
In the short term, let's keep showing up.
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