Hope is not the only alternative to despair
Hope is not the only alternative to despair. People act as though it is. Don’t believe them. Right now, as you are reading this essay, you have access to other constructive moods that can lift you out of despair. My two current favorites are resolve and curiosity.
This week, many people I know feel despair about the astonishing events taking place in Washington DC. The Trump/Musk arson on core American institutions and norms is quickly burning through the separation of powers in our federal government. Although the game is far from over and Trump has suffered embarrassing setbacks, the action is fast and destructive.
If despair is visiting you today, I get it.
Despair is no fun. It drags you down, infects your relationships, and poisons your health and soul. So you may be looking for an alternative mood to inhabit. For many people committed to personal growth — or at least sick of feeling down — this means one thing: time to look for signs of hope. That’s what they do when feeling despair. Got despair? Find hope. Everyone’s been taught this heuristic. Consider what journalists ask at the end of every interview exploring the brutal facts of today’s world: “So, what gives you hope?”
The intention to seek hope seems natural, even obvious. Yet, I want to persuade you to give it a rest. This preoccupation with hope traps you in a binary straitjacket where your mind is dominated by a single question: are things getting better, or are they getting worse?
Life is too short and the world too filled with goodness, truth and beauty to let this single question dominate your mind space. Many more things are happening. Maybe it’s time to give them some attention.
This is why I’ve been endorsing the moods of resolve and curiosity. Resolve invites you to look inward at your deepest commitments. What do I stand for? What am I willing to give my left arm to preserve?
Today, I am committed to preserving Congress’s constitutional powers, amplifying acts of courage, giving my kids a positive future, and nudging you, dear reader, to see more and stay in the game.
What do you feel resolved about today?
The other mood I’m endorsing is curiosity.
Curiosity prompts different yet equally valuable questions. What do I want to learn here? What if I looked at this situation with a completely different set of lenses? What is here to be discovered?
Today, I’m curious about the forms of obstructive power Democrats are using to put out the constitutional fires. If you don’t look for these stories, they will pass you by. I just learned about a bold act by Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii. Instead of just complaining about the Administration’s brazen shutdown of USAID (an independent $40 billion agency operating in a hundred countries — vaporized in less than a week), he used his authority to declare a “blanket hold” on all of Trump’s State Department nominees until the Administration reverses the shutdown. This is how you play hardball. This is how you set boundaries to discipline unruly displays of unilateral power.
I learned about this because of my curiosity. Despair wouldn’t have brought me to the same place.
What are you curious about right now?
Let’s face it. As we witness Musk’s vaporization of USAID and criminal rampage into the Department of Treasury, it makes total sense to feel despair (or anger or sadness or…) as an emotion. Yet allowing despair to persist as a mood that follows you around for days isn’t helpful. But hope is not the only alternative. You can also choose resolve or curiosity. They will guide you to discoveries and conversations you cannot foresee and will appreciate you found.
