This might be a bit of a difficult post this morning, so if you're looking for something light and entertaining, you may want to give this one a miss. Just saying...
When we first got married, my husband found my constant optimism a bit much, and he gave me the nickname Pollyanna. (For those readers who are too young to remember Hayley Mills, she was an actress who played a little girl named Pollyanna who was overly and unrealistically positive all the time). Whenever I chirped about sunshine and roses, he'd roll his eyes a little. I figured he was just of a more sober temperament than I. Life, mortgage, children, work, news broadcasts, and general existence have toned me down over the years, which likely needed to happen in order for me to function in the world. However, the last little while, I've noticed a new tendency in myself---whenever I see someone being optimistic online, I have this grumpy urge to pop bubbles, scorn dreams, and roll my own eyes.
This morning someone who is probably a very nice person posted on Facebook their vision that in fifteen years, the world would be a peaceful place, the oceans would be clear of plastic, everyone would have geothermal heat pumps, and diapers would be biodegradable. And sure enough, my first response was to think "Sweet innocent, most of the planet won't be inhabitable in 15 years."
My own thought brought me up short. Do I really believe there's no hope? Have I really lost any hope for the future of humanity? We certainly haven't got a good track record of cooperation and making wise choices. But does that mean such a dream is impossible?
I do have a deep religious faith regarding the future of our souls. I do believe ultimately the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory, as promised in scripture. But as far as our human existence on the planet over the coming decades...? We can't agree on pronouns, for pity's sake. How can we agree on climate action? People won't budge on what they perceive as their rights. How will they willingly deny themselves of their former excessive lifestyle in order to drastically reduce the human footprint on Earth? We're trafficking children and pushing those who are Different out from among us. Why should we have hope that we'll consider the non-human world important enough to sacrifice for? We're willing to drop bombs on our neighbours to take their territory, and meanwhile we're careening through space on a tiny speck we don't even steer. Even if everyone on Earth suddenly became altruistic overnight and politics instantly became moot, we're past the point of no return on certain climate factors, and the beautiful dream this person expressed online cannot come about.
So yeah. I guess Pollyanna is dead, and I have no hope in humanity as a whole. Does that mean I give up and embrace the coming difficult reality? No, of course not. As has been said, it's too late to live hopefully, but it's not too late to live compassionately, responsibly, meaningfully, intensely, even vibrantly. Will it make a difference to the trajectory we're on? As a group, no. But individually, yes. Will my actions matter to the planet as a whole? No. But they'll matter to me, and the few people around me. Will my getting a heat pump stop the feedback loop of global warming? Not a bit. But we do things not because they're successful, but because they're right.
As I've quoted before, when the plane is going down, the best thing, the only thing, to do is hold the hand of the person next to you. Will it stop the crash? No. Will it make any meaningful difference? Yes. To me. To the person next to me. In the end, it's all we can do. For me, it's the only path forward. So I don't choose hope. I choose meaning. I choose compassion. Which, I suppose, means not stomping on others' dreams even when I don't share them.
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