HOPE!

Dear Readers,

It is not my intention in writing this blog to spread gloom and despair, or to indulge my own inner demons, although in the process of my writing some of this may emerge.  Please bear with me in this, for if you do, I promise what you will hear is  my true  intention: inspiration, hope and its audacity as our new President calls it.  I am listening very carefully, searching around me and in my heart, to find these voices, and indeed, I find them everywhere, amazingly, audacious as it is  to have hope in such times, it is there.  The more I write the more I feel it is so.

 Please bear with me and read on, because your very act of reading is also hope for me.

Knowing that even one person  is reading these musings of mine takes away that sense of being lost  I  otherwise feel as I move along this unmapped road. It chips away at the separation between us, and makes me understand how important our interconnectedness is at a time like this.  FDR spoke about this during the Depression, saying there was nothing like those hard times to realize these things.  He also spoke those famous words about how there was nothing to fear but fear itself.

How true now. 

Fear itself.

How easy it is to forget this.  There are times that it feels that we are sold fear. Where our fear makes us hide away, attack others, horde what we have.

 There is nothing like fear to ameliorate our ability to act out of kindness.

But in my world right now kindness rules, not fear. I see it in the way my friends gather around us and offer support, and how we support others, trading services when the money for the rent is not there.  I see it in the quickness with which my eye doctor jumps to  provide a free eye exam and glasses to an undocumented student who could not see the board.   

We do not have to ask those at the bottom of the economic food chain to act with kindness for they know from experience how these acts directly impact them.  But as the hurts of our economy rise we begin to learn every day how we must help others.

For those on the top, who have been earning astronomical salaries,  who were not raised with such a perspective, who have no memories of  what a Depression or economic hardship really is, we may need to legislate kindness.  But for the rest of us, there is no need for this.

 It is the air we breath.  It is the north star we follow to guide us through this darkness.

Please stay with me. I am looking every night for it, watching every day. And I will keep writing about what I find.

And I welcome you too to tell me of the hope you find, for there will be days that I will forget,  get lost again, and I will need your to remind me.