There’s at least one good thing about a year that brings you to your knees. When the challenges that pushed you to the ground are contained there is only one way to go.
Up.
Up out of fear; up out of the fog of isolation; up out of grief; up from the bottom of wherever we landed for whatever reason we landed there. Yes, things could go down. They could get worse. A new virus variant is on the loose; it threatens to keep holding the world down. Our country could reblind it’s eye to its desperate need for racial equity and justice.
But this is New Year’s Eve, an arbitrary moment in which we agree as a world to turn our hearts toward hope. And hope, in my experience, only looks up.
Posie and I took our walk today up the backside of Capitol Hill in Seattle, through an affluent neighborhood that’s lost its shine these past months, past tents erected in odd places, like in the middle of the sidewalk overlooking the freeway at a point where the noise is deafening, and in the middle of the playground of a closed down school, just in front of the swing set.
It was a heavy, breath-inducing walk. Uphill. Which is, I am sure, why I found myself chanting “up, up, up” to the rhythm of our steps.
And also why, as I look toward 2021, with its promise of vaccines and radical social change, I realize how much I need to wrap my arms around that word – “up” – and hold on tight. Have you seen pictures of a gorilla baby clinging to its mother’s back or belly? I need to cling to hope like that.
The things I personally need to look up from – rise up from – have no easy fixes. There’s a lot of work to do to untangle the depression and feelings of aloneness in which I’ve been engulfed since last March. Something big needs to shift both within me and in the shameful mess that is our country’s healthcare system to alleviate the deep-seated fears I hold about losing medical coverage. It is a fear that has kept me on just this side of the poverty line for years, making abundance seem an impossible goal.
I’ve got a lot of worries to replace with trust and acceptance and I have no idea how or when these changes will happen.
But huffing up the hill, staring at my feet for much of the way, it occurred to me that it all starts with looking up – into hope. Trusting, even as I walk, that I won’t trip over the root coming up through the sidewalk. Or if I do, I’ll recover from the slam.
It has been a tough, tough year, 2020. Too many losses on too many levels. A year marred by myriad forms of death – not only from COVID-19 and all the other reapers that claim the body, but of dreams and ideals and of the sense of belonging that defines us as human.
I know that flipping the page on a calendar does not change anything. COVID-19 will still be racing through our streets on January 1, even with a vaccine slowly working through our essential ranks. Violence and more covert racist acts and beliefs will continue, even as the pressure to dismantle systemic racism continues to build.
We are not there yet on any of the challenging fronts this war of a year has brought.
And that is why we need pause tonight, the last day of 2020, and celebrate tomorrow, the first day of a new year. We need this reminder that all of life is coming and going, beginning and ending, starting over constantly. The reminder that this too shall pass. The world, our country, our own little lives will move forward. Things will change. Hope makes it possible they will improve.
When Posie and I reached the top of the hill, we turned around and looked down at the cityline below. I am not sure about the dog, but for a brief moment I felt the pelt of that mama gorilla I am riding. I felt the possibility of a year ahead in which a kinder, more giving, more humane, more equitable, and less money-driven world begins to emerge.
And then I looked up.
It’s been gray and rainy in Seattle these past few days and the forecast promises mostly cloudy with intermittent deluges over the next week.
But for just that moment, on this New Year’s eve, as my dog and I caught our breath, a spot – just a spot – of sun came through. A tiny puff of cloud parted to reveal a bit of blue.
Hope looks up.
I knew that, walking back down the hill, I would step over the same discarded face masks. I would move off sidewalks to give a wide berth to passersby. I would walk by those same tents, knowing there are thousands more just like them all around our city, and think “there but for the grace of God go I.”
But hope looks up, so at the top of the hill I looked up too. To remind myself to hold tight.
To invite you to do the same.
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