Finding courage in a treacherous time

AKA channeling my inner Anne Frank or Winston Churchill

It’s a scary time to be alive.

Scary in many ways, of course. A huge, brutal war of aggression by Russia in the heart of eastern Europe (I almost wrote “the Soviet Union,” because I’m of that era), and the horrific decline of the Republican Party into an avowedly racist, sexist, reactionary (or worse) and otherwise despicable shadow of what it once was, are just two examples.

And yes, I know the GOP and America have often had elements like that, but anyone who’s lived through what I’ve lived through knows this is different in kind, at least in my lifetime.

But that’s not my main point today.

A friend wrote on Facebook in recent days about how despondent he is about climate change. He’s not alone, of course. It’s hard not to lose hope at times, even if only for a moment or two, after doom scrolling on Twitter or reading a news article about the dangers we face and the frustrating and appalling inaction they so often inspire.

That set me to thinking. Why am I not despondent all the time? Am I just not paying enough attention? Too caught up in my own day-to-day life? Too selfish, too entitled, too … human?

Of course one could always be more dedicated, more committed, more obsessed, more effective, more dogged.

But I think the real reason is that I still have hope.

“Hope” is a strange thing. We all need it to live. To put one foot in front of the other. But it’s hard to maintain. Christians and believers in other theologies I’m not as familiar with, have an otherworldly/spiritual underpinning for hope. But for those of us who aren’t so certain on that front, how do we sustain hope in the face of daunting, near impossible odds and horribly difficult challenges?

My short answer is that we need to keep hoping because that’s what people do in those kinds of circumstances if they want to have any chance of surviving and succeeding.

I think of people—European Jews and others—who somehow, in spite of incredible obstacles, escaped the Holocaust and lived out their lives, despite the loss of so many millions of their contemporaries. Hope, alone didn’t save them, of course. It sometimes took weird combinations of luck, skill, help from others who risked their lives and their families lives to give that help, and whatever else you choose to call it—destiny, fate, mysteries beyond our ken—for them to evade the Nazis’ murderous rampage.

And even for those who didn’t make it — think of Anne Frank — their spirit and their memories surround us still, and give us a model of how to live with the unthinkable.

Looking to fiction, I think of that fantasy marvel “The Lord of the Rings,” and how a few small, rustic, seemingly inconsequential hobbits persevered against the mighty Sauron, the very personification of evil, without losing hope (with a few brief exceptions) in even the most utterly hopeless situations.

Which means, I think, that hope is akin to courage.

Not the kind of physical courage that makes people jump out of trenches and charge at the enemy under fire, at imminent risk of death or dismemberment. But a kind of emotional courage that I think underlies the physical kind. An unwillingness to give up even when it seems to make sense to give up. A kind of resilience, maybe a kind of stubbornness—the kind you see, in fiction, in Sam, Frodo’s friend and companion, and in history in Winston Churchill, whatever you may think of his other (many) flaws and failings.

Apparently, J.R.R. Tolkien once said that Sam was the true hero of the saga.

In any case, it’s that kind of resilience, that kind of emotional courage we need to nurture today. I know the terrible facts: melting icecaps and glaciers, vanishing species, strange threatening changes to the climate that are even now making it too hot, too rainy, too mercurial in many places for humans — and other species — to live, even though they’ve lived there for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, or more, until modern industry changed the very atmosphere above us and pollution of various kinds began to wreck the reservoirs of salt and fresh water we all depend on for life.

And the callous disregard shown by much of the business world and the political elite for the magnitude of the dangers facing us and the urgent need to make drastic changes.

So, yeah, it sucks. And yeah, it’s tough to be here, on this planet at this moment, especially if you’re aware of all these factors and dangers.

But what else is there to do but carry on, and do our best?

I have a wife, two daughters, two sons-in-law, three grandchildren and many friends I love tremendously. I care about their futures. And I care about others, multiples of friends and other family members and their friends and family members; people I don’t know all over the world, and animals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians and all the rest —all the other species we’ve held hostage to our rapacious way of dealing with the world.

I hope we can avoid the cataclysm that seems headed our way. And I hope I can do as much as I can to try to head it off.

I’ve got to have faith that we can pull this off—or that, barring that, that some of us can survive the cataclysm and find a path beyond it. With Spring happening all around me, belief in survival & rebirth seems plausible. It’s Nature’s way, after other cataclysms and disasters, in the recent past and deep in the depths of the Planet’s history.

Does it make sense to believe this, to feel this way? Possibly not. But I can’t see another path forward. Especially when I think of my grandchildren, and look into their eyes.