Holding onto the Thread
Thoughts on a year of committing to hope and what’s to come
The Way It Is
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
One year ago this weekend, I published the first Notes on Hope essay and invited you to join me in an experiment. In my initial note, I shared that, in the course of my career, I’ve found writing about sustaining hope to be an instrumental practice in my own ability to do so.
“Over the years, I’ve found that writing about how we navigate the challenges of remaining hopeful and useful in our uniquely fraught and fragile times has helped me to be more tender and brave, despite the many things that can easily pull us toward apathy or despair.”
My goal in writing and publishing these notes each week has been twofold. First, in beginning this experiment in hope, I anticipated that committing to the discipline of writing weekly would be a way of holding myself accountable to remaining hopeful and to taking the kinds of actions in the world that justify hope. Through hope we envision a better future, and in this envisioning a responsibility toward the future takes shape. Hope is an act of imagination. But it is a unique form of imagination, because it is one that does not permit us to linger in fantasy. Instead, hope couples itself firmly to the realities of the present; our hope for tomorrow begins to evaporate if we do not live up to it through our actions today. This is why I view hope as a rugged commitment, not a flimsy or reckless dream. In naming the realities of the present, painting vivid portraits of what the future could be, and affirming that we believe that version of the future is possible, we make a promise to work toward what we imagine. Writing about hope is a way of holding myself to that promise.
My second goal in writing these notes and making them public has been to create a sense of shared light in dark moments. Holding onto a hopeful vision of the future and fighting for that future can be lonely and exhausting. It is often easier to tuck our heads down and focus on simply keeping the wheels of our daily lives in motion than to peer into the future and imagine its possibilities. This is particularly true when imagining the future requires us to look with honesty and clarity at a present day reality that is filled with more heartbreak and fear than we think we will be able to bear. But, as James Baldwin said in the quote I opened these notes with a year ago, “you can’t tell the children that there is no hope.” So we are obliged by those who will live through the future to take responsibility for that future today, to do so with the firm belief that something better is within reach, and to stretch toward that vision with all we have.
It is much easier to do this when we feel we are not alone in our striving—when we remind each other, especially in difficult times, of what could be and clasp hands to take steps forward together. My strongest desire for these notes is that they help to do that for you—to provide some assurance that none of us is alone by bearing witness to the realities of the present and lighting a spark of possibility that makes it a little easier to see beyond the current moment and to move forward, knowing that others are doing the same and that the obligations of hope are shared.
When I began writing these notes a year ago, I’d hoped that we would not find ourselves in such devastating and urgent times today. I recognized the possibility but hoped we would choose a different path. But this is precisely the challenge hope presents us with. Our hopes are not guaranteed. We do not simply wish a better future into becoming reality, and the future we envision is often not only stalled but pulled backwards instead, despite our efforts. Refusing to let go of hope, even when what we had imagined does not come to pass—and even when it seems fiercely and cruelly discarded—is what makes hope a deep commitment, not simply a wish. So, while I would like to be writing these notes, a year after beginning them, under brighter, easier circumstances, I also know that a different timeline would have presented its own challenges—perhaps not as dire or imminent, but there would surely still have been work for hope to do.
Most importantly, I believe that we can’t ever allow the threats of a particular moment to act as proof that hope is naïve, because to do so is to abandon our obligations to the future. Rather, it is when the present is darkest that it is most essential to reaffirm our promise to the future and hold on even more tightly to the thread of hope that tethers us to a vision of something better and insists upon our effort to pull toward that possibility. As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a century ago,
“Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself into wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.”
While there are many things that are more frightening and more heartbreaking today than when I began writing these notes last summer, and while it would surely be easier to write about hope with more obvious points of light to guide the way, I think it is more necessary now than ever to name the harms we witness, to describe a future that contests darkness, and to commit to the work of shaping that future. I hope that reading these notes has helped you to do that over the past year and will continue to, whatever challenges we may face in the year ahead.
As I begin a second year of writing about hope, with greater clarity on both the challenge and the significance of doing so in our current reality, I’m making some changes behind the scenes that I wanted to share with you in advance. Most notably, I’m moving Notes on Hope to a new home. Over the past month, I’ve been working on migrating Notes on Hope from Substack to Ghost—an open-source, non-profit platform. If all goes according to plan, next week’s note should be sent from the new site. The entire archive for this first year will be available on the new site, and I’m in the final stages of migrating the subscriber list, so there shouldn’t be any disruption for readers. The other change you may notice will be the domain, which will become notesonhope.net. In order to minimize any chance of messages from the new site being diverted to spam, the Ghost support team (which is amazing!) has recommended marking notesonhope.net as a safe domain in your email filters.
If there are any unforeseen glitches and you do not receive a note next week, please let me know! Should that happen, you can contact me by replying to this note directly, by leaving a comment, or by messaging me through Substack, which I will still check for communications. Starting next week, you will also be able to contact me through the new Notes on Hope contact page.
I will write more details in my note next week about why I have made the decision to move Notes on Hope off of Substack. But, for now, I will share the condensed rationale, which is that this is a values alignment decision. I’ve been following dialogue about concerns over the direction of Substack for a while, and in the course of this past year, those concerns have become more amplified and more entrenched in Substack’s business model. Given the tenor and purpose of Notes on Hope, it feels particularly problematic to be writing each week about the ways in which all of the small actions of our daily lives have meaning and significance, while embedding my own voice within a platform that doesn’t align with the values I share here. As I will dive into more deeply next week, this misalignment isn’t about limiting the range of speech and discourse, but rather about how profit models can impact which ideas are elevated, amplified, and subsidized. It is important to me that Notes on Hope have a home that doesn’t undermine the very messages and responsibilities I write about each week.
More on this to come. In the meantime, there’s nothing readers need to do, other than setting notesonhope.net as a safe domain and letting me know if you do not receive a note next week, so I can be sure to resolve any unexpected glitches. I do not anticipate issues, but I also have enough experience with technology migrations to know that they are rarely perfect, so please don’t hesitate to reach out if anything goes awry in your reading experience.
For now, thank you for holding hope with me through this tumultuous past year. Writing each week has helped me stay tender and brave. I hope reading has done the same for you, and that you will continue to join me in hope and in hopeful action as we move ahead.
As I opened these notes one year ago with the words of James Baldwin, I would like to leave you this week with more of his wisdom on finding hope in dark times.
“One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light. It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is a light.”
With gratitude for your company, as we’ve kept a light burning in dark moments, and with a continued commitment to hope,
Alicia
P.S. If you are not already a subscriber and would like to become one, please head on over to the new page at notesonhope.net and subscribe there!
A few things I found helpful and hopeful this week…
What chimpanzees’ use of medicinal plants says about empathy
It may not always feel like it, but empathy is deeply embedded in our evolution, and we can always stand to be reminded of this and to learn from other animals.The prognosis for the U.S. public health system
This article, in itself, is definitely not hopeful, but hope requires clarity, and I think the courage of the clear and honest reporting here is hopeful.After the Explosion, Before It’s Too Late
An important reminder about the risks of waning stamina and motivation and the necessary role of community in keeping us alert and active.Empathy Is a Kind of Strength
Jacinda Ardern reflects on public rage and kind leadership
If you think someone else in your life might need some hope, please share. It’s always easier to hold onto hope when we’re not doing it alone.
And if you appreciated this post and are not already a subscriber, please consider subscribing to Notes on Hope at the new site, notesonhope.net.