Hell in a handbasket

I'm putting ribbons on mine

Dear Writer,

How are you feeling?

This week feels particularly heavy. I’m not going to list it all here. You know what’s going on if you’ve been on social media or reading the news, and if you’ve stayed off for a reason, I’m not going to bust into your inbox and carry it to you.

Suffice it to say… it’s been a rough few… well… months? Years? Decades?

So in this week’s letter, I’m just going to talk to you about hope. If you’re not in the mood for it, if you feel like it minimizes the suffering that’s going on out there, then I’m giving you the warning bell so you can nope out now.

If you could use a little cheering up, keep reading.

I grew up as a kid who could only protect herself from abuse by anticipating and catering to the moods of the people around me.

(Are you feeling hopeful yet? HANG IN THERE. It gets better.)

Anyway, that’s led to me being the kind of person who always, no matter what the situation, has to make the people around me happy. I must cheer them up, show them the bright side, fix the problem, make it all okay. This is how my company came to be named Chipperish Media, a portmanteau of “chipper” and “gibberish,” which is probably the most astute description of me in a nut shell.

Let me tell you… it’s been a challenge to exude chipperish in recent years. It feels like the entire world has been slowly falling into a pit since the mid-90s or so, when American politics started to become divided in a shameless, cynical way fueled by a new media savvy that made some people in power realize that they could just lie about shit and people would know they were lying and could pull up video evidence that they were lying and it still wouldn’t matter. It seems like we’ve been stuck in an endless downward spiral ever since, with things getting worse and worse until Columbine and Citizens United and Trump and Brexit and the murder of George Floyd (or any number of Black people, we just started to care at Floyd) and the systematic dismantling of bodily autonomy rights and COVID and the Ukraine and…

Sorry. I said I wasn’t going to talk about the specific terrible things, didn’t I? I’m sorry. I suck. Anyway.

Here’s the secret: Everything seems like it’s just getting worse and worse and worse but it’s not.

It was always this bad.

Are you feeling better yet? Hang on.

It was always this bad. Always. It’s just that we weren’t told about it, because the Bad Things were happening to the poor and the non-white and the non-American and the non-Western and we never heard from their perspectives, because we didn’t care.

Oh, ouch. Yeah, that stings a little bit for me and my ilk, but there it is.

I can hear some of you out there saying, “Lani, this was supposed to be hopeful and you’re not making me feel hopeful, okay?” and yes, I get it. Hope is on the way, I promise.

As a matter of fact, it’s here.

People say the internet is the downfall of the world as we know it and maybe it is. But maybe the world as we knew it wasn’t so goddamn great after all. Voices outside of the mainstream Western media are finally able to be heard because of the internet. Those of us who lived within a privileged little bubble have been slowly introduced over the last 20 years or so to voices outside of our privileged little bubble, and that has brought on some pretty harsh existential dread, with the last five or so years being probably the worst of it.

But at least now we know.

It’s better to know. You can’t fight something you don’t acknowledge as being real and present.

We know more about the realities of the world than we ever have. That means we can do something about them. And yeah, it’s gonna be scary. The world is falling into instability and that means a lot of stupid, needless suffering. All of that is true.

But do not forget that the stupid, needless suffering was always happening. More of us are just aware of it now.

Which means we can finally do something about it.

And that’s where the hope comes in.

I have hope. Maybe it’s foolish and naîve, but I have it. I know that we’re in dark times, but I also believe that the human soul leans toward goodness, and I believe that more of us than not will lean toward goodness, and that eventually, the instability caused by disruptions of the current power structures, which have been incredibly destructive, will fade into a new world that is more connected and cooperative than it has ever been.

More now than ever, I’ve had the words of Margaret Mead bouncing around in my head: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

I believe that’s true, but I also know that no one ever changed anything without hope. So hold on to yours; it’s your most powerful weapon in this fight .

Everything,

L