Optimism Is a Super Power
My husband can’t be around optimism right now.
He’s generally an upbeat guy, and hasn’t lost his sense of humor even amid the gloom of quarantine. But mention plans to fast-track a vaccine; polls suggesting the election might go the way he wants it to; the notion that America is in the midst of some sort of an “awakening” on racism… and he gives an agonized shrug, gets monosyllabic, changes the subject.
I’m right there with him. This year has crushed many, many hopes. As Sarah Stankorb writes in GEN, “2020 has been the sort of year that carries a mythic quality; it’s a cosmic test, the darkest timeline, the year from hell.”
We’re a family that puts our faith squarely in science, but even so, it’s hard not to let a little superstition creep in—and with it the irrational fear that a moment of misplaced optimism in a Brooklyn living room might somehow jinx our already tragically jinxed world.
So I was moved by Stankorb’s rousing call for faith (religious or not) as a path to optimism. She admits that 2020 might break her “capacity for optimism.” But without optimism, envisioning a better world—and finding the fortitude to build it—is clearly impossible: “The capacity to picture something larger and imbued with good is its own power.”
Americans are known for their optimism. To turn from this moment into something better, we’ll need more than “we can do it!” platitudes. This moment requires a sturdier optimism. Whether it’s faith in one’s God or justice itself or democracy’s highest ideals, we each deserve and many need some daily time spent reflecting there, devoting ourselves in quiet thought — away from the scream of social media and news alerts — to begin picturing our way through, to manifest some light from this dark time.
