Hope is a Dangerous Thing

where I'm finding hope in a hopeless time

Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash

Against my better judgment, I started a new play. Granted, I was specifically asked to write said new play, and am being compensated for it. And yet, there was still a part of me that wanted to say “no”. Because it is hard, and it never gets easier.

I started thinking about how writing a play is a radical act of hope. There is hope that you have the ability to tell the story that you want to, and tell it well. There is hope that one day you will get to hear the words out loud in a room full of people. Then there is hope that it will actually be produced, and that an audience will receive it well. None of this is guaranteed when you write the first scene. Odds are that when you write a play, nothing will ever happen to it, and it will sit on your hard drive, as if you never wrote it. I think of all of the people out there who wrote a play, and because of barriers (class, race, gender, finances, LIFE) never did anything with it. I think about that a lot. I think a lot about the voices we don’t get to hear, and there’s always a conversation with myself about whether my voice matters.

As part of my healing work (I just vomited in my mouth saying that, I am such a cliche these days), I have been writing a letter to my teenage self. Learning that I was neurodivergent has finally given me a way to truly extend forgiveness to my younger self, because I understand more fully why she was the way she was, and I want to embrace the good parts of her. The part that’s been hardest to hang onto is her ability to hope. Despite everything I was going through, hope is ultimately what got me out. Sure, there was hard work, luck, and good old fashioned tenacity - but underneath all that was an unflagging hope for a better life.

The past decade - globally and personally - has tested my capacity for hope. There have been disappointments on top of disappointments. My worldview has been flipped upside down and backwards, more than once. I’ve had to re-evaluate everything I hold dear - my work, my feminism, my politics, my personal relationships - over and over again. There have been so many times I have felt completely lost. Somehow, I keep coming back to hope. This may seem like a very naive way of looking at things, but make no mistake - I am not naive. Hope and compassion are not synonymous with weakness and naiveté. Too many people have mistaken my kindness for weakness. It’s a grave miscalculation. When I need to be, I am forged steel.

My beliefs are progressive, but I am also a pragmatist. These two things fight with each other in my brain every single day. Logically, I understand that the world is a dumpster fire. I understand we may be at the point of no return, in so many ways, and that human life on this planet may be closer to its end than we’d like to consider. I know that the systems we operate under are untenable. I understand that the problems in this country are built into its very DNA, and I am not hopeful that we as a country are ever going to acknowledge that our very existence is founded upon displacement and abuse, nor will we find meaningful ways to rectify it.

So where can I find hope now?

I am not going to go too far into the Grammys, because it has predictably turned into a swirl of controversy, but I felt inspired and moved. We got to see performances from legends like Joni Mitchell and Tracy Chapman and Annie Lennox, and the newer voices of women like Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, and SZA. Women dominated nearly every category, in both wins and nominations. I know that awards and award shows are problematic, mired in white patriarchy, and not representative of who is actually the “best”. But still - while the very mention of Taylor Swift makes a lot of people immediately froth at the mouth - it was a bit thrilling to see a woman win an all time record for most Album of the Year wins. Should it have been a different woman? Maybe. But that record no longer belongs to a man. I also have hope that Beyonce WILL win it at some point (did everyone forget that she lost to frickin’ Beck** for her se;f titled? I DID NOT. Go be mad at Beck. Or Harry Styles).

*edited to reflect that I mixed up Beyonce’s self titled album with Lemonade, because ADHD. I’m still mad Lemonade lost, but Adele was Classy about it.

I still believe that making art - music, painting, plays, poems, stories - is an act of hope, and can give hope to others who have lost it. That our humanity shines brightest when we tell our own stories, especially the stories that have historically been dismissed, degraded, or outright ignored. We are facing down another terrible election year, and so many of us feel discouraged and disempowered. The wheels seem to be coming off more and more every day. Despite this, I still believe that there is still some good in humanity, and that we are not powerless. Maybe I will eat these words in a year, but for now, it’s how I’m choosing to operate.

I have a new way I trick myself into writing when I don’t want to. I select a vinyl record - I have a small collection of treasured albums in physical format - and I play it. I sit on the couch with my laptop, and the rule is that I have to open up whatever I’m working on and write, and I am not allowed to stop and fuck around on the interweb until the album is over. I like that it gives me built-in breaks when I have to flip to the other side, and it also reminds me how much I enjoy listening to entire albums. So far, the trick is working like gangbusters. I have forty pages of the new play written, and I have no idea what it is yet, or what it will be in the end, but I’m letting myself just not know that for the moment.

The other day, my vinyl selection for writing time was Norman Fucking Rockwell by Lana Del Rey. I didn’t even really like Lana Del Rey, for years, and then she made an absolutely perfect record. I could listen to it every day and never get sick of it.

The closing song is one of my favorites, and is aptly titled “Hope is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have (But I Have It)”. If you haven’t, give it a listen. It’s a really good song. And yes, hope feels dangerous right now. But without it, what the hell have we got?