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On a chilly Sunday morning in March, my granddaughter Livia and I went on an adventure through a nearly-deserted downtown Kansas City. Judging from her response, there\u2019s nothing quite like the joy of cartwheeling through an empty passageway between a mall and a hotel lobby. She showed me how to use the slow-motion video function on my phone and then continued wheeling back and forth in front of the fountain. She found it hard to stop.<\/p>\n
For as long as I can remember my natural instinct has been to be hopeful and positive. I see possibilities and go for them. My parents encouraged me or, at least, stayed out of the way enough that the impulse stayed alive. I still carry the residue of a childhood belief in Annie Oakley\u2019s, \u201cI can do anything.\u201d The sense of possibility I get from leaping into things to see what I can do feels akin to Livia\u2019s cartwheeling spirit.<\/p>\n
That spirit has certainly been tested over the years, seldom more than it is today by the state of our political and economic world. Can we really do\u00a0<\/em>anything? I\u2019m convinced we can, and I\u2019m egged on by a positive frame of mind that I just can’t shake.<\/p>\n Several decades ago a friend, Jennifer, sent me a postcard because it reminded her of me. Despite pack-rat tendencies to save documents and memories on paper, I can\u2019t find the card now, but I remember it being a black and white photograph of a cobblestone street, in what I took to be early 20th century Paris. In the middle of the street, a man had popped his head out of a sewer, the round sewer cover on his head and a big smile on his face. My memory is that he looked happy, even a little giddy as though asking, what\u2019ll we do next?<\/p>\n Jennifer wasn\u2019t the only one who pegged me as cheerful. I remember being asked once, why I seemed so happy all the time. Since I couldn\u2019t think of a good reason, I said something like, \u201cIt\u2019s just easier this way.\u201d More than once in the past, I\u2019ve been called a \u201cPollyanna.\u201d This may partly have been because nicknames tend to play off one\u2019s own name, but I\u2019m sure it also had something to do with my general disposition. At first being called Pollyanna seemed complimentary or just descriptive. More and more, though, I began to cringe when I heard it, feeling its pejorative undertones. I was embarrassed. Was my cheerfulness irrational or annoying? And who was Pollyanna anyway?<\/p>\n Pollyanna<\/em>, a 1913 children\u2019s novel by Eleanor H. Porter, told of a girl who got through a terrible childhood by playing what she called her \u201cGlad Game,\u201d in which she found something to be glad about in every situation, no matter how dreadful it was. Briefly summarized, this might not sound so bad, but colloquially, \u201cPollyanna\u201d has come to mean being foolishly or blindly optimistic, sometimes responding insensitively to terrible things. The adjective Pollyannaish has a male parallel in \u201cPanglossian.\u201d Dr. Pangloss, in Voltaire\u2019s Candide<\/em>, was \u201can incurable, albeit misguided, optimist who claimed that \u2018all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.\u2019 So persistent was he in his optimism that he kept it even after witnessing and experiencing great cruelty and suffering.\u201d (Merriam-Webster)<\/p>\n Even when I was younger, I knew this wasn\u2019t the way my energy worked. I\u2019ve never felt that taking a positive attitude into the world denies the conditions I find there. Being aware of suffering or unfairness can in fact move me to act, to see what I can do about it. I wouldn\u2019t characterize my actions as playing a \u201cglad game,\u201d even though something like gladness can come from it. There\u2019s a kind of joy in figuring out what can be done to right a wrong, find a solution, or discover a new way to see an old problem. My hopefulness lives, at least partly, in often small but ultimately positive acts.<\/p>\n I long to talk more about why or how I can be positive or hopeful now, but it\u2019s not easy. I stumble when I try to write about it. I struggle with the words when I try to talk about it out loud. Hope and possibility can feel sort of wimpy and irrelevant. There always seems to be something more important and urgently serious. How does one take a hopeful stance in the midst of the fight for immigrants\u2019 humanity or for protection of children and all of us from a lethal gun culture? What positive frame can one possibly create when democratic systems are failing and under attack and when we so urgently need to fight against more environmental destruction and against racism, the abuse of privilege, and increasing economic inequality?<\/p>\n If it\u2019s not Pollyannaism or blind optimism that drives my hopefulness, what is it? And how in the world do I put that into words?<\/p>\n Whenever I get stuck and can\u2019t seem to move ahead, I read, I listen, I learn and borrow from others to put the pieces together for myself. I can\u2019t do it alone. Though I sit here now, by myself \u2013 trying to learn a little more and be clearer about my words \u2013 I\u2019m not really alone. I\u2019m surrounded by what I\u2019ve pulled together from reading, from my own immediate experience, and from what I hear in other people\u2019s stories.<\/p>\n As part of an early 2017 episode of WNYC\u2019s On the Media<\/em>, Robert Garfield interviewed writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit.*\u00a0<\/sup>He began by mentioning that her 2004 book, Hope in the Dark: Untold histories, wild possibilities,<\/em>was again \u201cflying off the shelves.\u201d The interview began with her reading a passage from the book outlining recent historical instances of unexpected, often nonlinear ways positive change has happened. Despite these lessons from history, Garfield was troubled. \u201cIn the foreseeable future, he said, \u201cwe are likely as a society to go abruptly and maybe irretrievably backwards on civil rights, human rights, climate, sanity. Isn\u2019t a man permitted to be morose and desperate without surrendering? Isn\u2019t that a reasonable reaction to horrible events?\u201d<\/p>\n Solnit replied:<\/p>\n You\u2019re talking about two different things: How do we feel, and what do we do? I\u2019m not telling people how to feel. I\u2019m telling people that there is scope for action. One of the great conundrums is that unless we believe there are possibilities we don\u2019t act, but the possibilities only exist if we seize them.<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m not an optimist. Optimism believes everything will be fine no matter what we do, and therefore we don\u2019t have to do a damn thing. Pessimism is the mirror image of that that believes everything is going to hell in a hand basket, and it get<\/em>s us off the hook. We don\u2019t have to do anything. Hope for me is deeply tied to the fact that we don\u2019t know what will happen. This gives us grounds to act while being clear that terrible things are happening.\u2026 There\u2019s wiggle room in there. A lot of extraordinary stuff is happening and it\u2019s happening in complex ways\u2026 We\u2019re not talking about a future that\u2019s already written.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Solnit inspires my determination to hang on to a positive orientation while not losing track of the conditions that keep me moving. One definition of positive is \u201cconcentrating on what is constructive and good.\u201d That feels right to me.<\/p>\n My hope is not abstract. Hope can be an opening that gives us grounds to act, but it can also be triggered by stories of real people finding new, or sometimes bringing back old, ways of living and working together. It grows not just from the possibilities of an unknown future, but also from the actions, work, and ideas of real people who loudly, or often quietly, make a difference and show us new ways to live. Solnit reinforces my own observation that \u201ca lot of extraordinary stuff is happening.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the past year or so I\u2019ve struggled to figure out the best ways I can respond to the current state of the world \u2013 to find my piece of the puzzle. One thing I\u2019ve come to is that I want to contribute to imagining how we get out of this mess. Another way to put it is that I want to help answer questions like, Where is it we want to go? What do we want to be creating as we go forward, and how do we get there? For me, real-life stories along with leaps of imagination that tie them together are like fuel for my hopefulness.<\/p>\n Now and then in coming months, I plan to share stories I\u2019ve collected and new ones I will discover, the kind of extraordinary stories that Solnit refers to. I also plan to write about some of the connecting threads, broad ideas or theories that draw on the various stories and that may tie them together and add to their potential and their power.\u00a0As I write, I\u2019ll try to avoid being blindly Pollyannaish without losing my own stubbornly positive voice.<\/p>\n Photo credit<\/strong><\/p>\n The original photo of Littleton\u2019s Pollyanna statue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license<\/a>. The photo is by David Fulmer, Daveynin, shown here with my modifications.<\/p>\n<\/span><\/p>\n
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