Anne Lamott - Almost Everything: Notes on Hope

I am stockpiling antibiotics for the apocalypse, even as I await the blossoming of paperwhites on the windowsill in the kitchen. The news of late has captured the fever dream of modern life: everything exploding, burning, being shot, or crashing to the ground all around us, while growing older has provided me with a measure of perspective and equilibrium, and a lovely, long-term romance. Towns and cities, ice fields, democracy, peopleall disappear, while we rejoice and thrive in the spring and the sweetness of old friendships. Families are tricky. There is so much going on that flattens us, that is huge, scary, or simply appalling. Were doomed, stunned, exhausted, and overcaffeinated.

And yet, outside my window, yellow roses bloom, and little kids horse around, making a joyous racket.

In general, it doesnt feel like the light is making a lot of progress. It feels like death by annoyance. At the same time, the truth is that we are beloved, even in our current condition, by someone; we have loved and been loved. We have also known the abyss of love lost to death or rejection, and that it somehow leads to new life. We have been redeemed and saved by love, even as a few times we have been nearly destroyed, and worse, seen our children nearly destroyed. We are who we love, we are one, and we are autonomous.

Love has bridged the high-rises of despair we were about to fall between. Love has been a penlight in the blackest, bleakest nights. Love has been a wild animal, a poultice, a dinghy, a coat. Love is why we have hope.

So why have some of us felt like jumping off tall buildings ever since we can remember, even those of us who do not struggle with clinical depression? Why have we repeatedly imagined turning the wheels of our cars into oncoming trucks?

We just do.

To me, this is very natural. It is hard here.

There is the absolute hopelessness we face that everyone we love will die, even our newborn granddaughter, even as we trust and know that love will give rise to growth, miracles, and resurrection. Love and goodness and the worlds beauty and humanity are the reasons we have hope. Yet no matter how much we recycle, believe in our Priuses, and abide by our local laws, we see that our beauty is being destroyed, crushed by greed and cruel stupidity. And we also see love and tender hearts carry the day. Fear, against all odds, leads to community, to bravery and right action, and these give us hope.

I wake up not knowing if our leader has bombed North Korea. And still, this past year has been just about the happiest of my life.

So yeah: it can all be a bit confusing.

On the one hand, there is the hopelessness of people living in grinding poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, and uptown Oakland. On the other, we pour our money and time into organizations that feed and mentor people, teach in Uganda and Appalachia, show up in refugee camps with water and art supplies. People like us all over the world teach girls auto repair and electrical installation, teach boys to care for babies. Witnessing this fills me to bursting with hope. I have never witnessed both more global and national brutality and such goodness in the worlds response to her own.

And then there are our families of origin. Some of us grew up in the alternative universe of unhappy marriages, where we accepted as normal desperate parental need, and bizarre sights just short of a head on a stick. Im sure your family was just fine, and the template of love you grew up with was kindness and mutual respect, delight in each other, patience with a spouse or a childs foibles. But other familiesjust a few, here and there, hardly worth mentioningwere stressed, neglectful, fundamentalist, racist, alcoholic, schizophrenic, repressed. Brothers and sisters didnt always survive. We became jumpy perfectionists.