Pep Talk: On Hanging in There

(And I don't even like cats)

Hi, Friend.

I promised a pep talk in my last post, and—maybe unsurprisingly—it’s been really hard to be peppy. Nearly everyone I know and love is afraid right now. Nearly everyone I know and love is angry and heartbroken. Some are in fierce action mode—making calls, organizing, protesting. Some are just trying to keep their heads above water.

Most people I know are toggling between hope and despair. It’s hard on the nervous system to toggle between hope and despair. I know this, because I’ve been toggling.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m a hoper at heart. A stubborn hoper. Even when a situation seems impossible, you’ll see me hanging in there, like the kitten from the poster. You know the one.

I used to call myself a recovering pessimist, but these days I’m more of a natural optimist. I believe nearly anything is possible with enough heart, enough energy, enough cooperation. The end of “Good Bones” is “You could make this place beautiful.” It’s a statement of possibility, and one I still believe.

I think it’s worth noting that the poem doesn’t end, “It will be easy to make this place beautiful.” Ease isn’t something we’ve been promised, not in our personal relationships, not in our professional lives, and not in our increasingly fragile democracy. I wish more parts of our lives—and selfishly, my own little life—clicked into place easily. I wish we could coast a little more and pedal a little less. But coasting isn’t going to get us there, because we’re heading up a steep hill.

I just returned from a trip to Seattle, where I gave a talk for Seattle Arts & Lectures—an honor and a joy, I have to say. While I was packing for the trip, I opened a glasses case, and a fortune cookie slip fell out of it and fluttered to the floor. I picked it up and read it: “You always see better with your heart.”

Well, damn. I grinned thinking about Past Me choosing to put that message inside one of my many glasses cases. “You’re such a POET,” I could imagine my kids saying. They love to roast me.

That little slip of paper had been sitting in there for who knows how long—probably years—and its message found its way to me during a time when I had started to question that way of seeing. I’ve seen with my heart for as long as I can remember, often despite what my other eyes can see. It’s not logical, and it’s not very strategic, and sometimes it hurts like a son of a bitch, but it’s who I am.

When life feels difficult, it’s tempting to close up, to focus on thinking vs. feeling, to protect myself. But then this little fortune fell to the floor, and there was my answer: Stay open. Stay a stubborn hoper. Keep pedaling.

Hang in there, baby.

Love,
Maggie