Optimism. Such a hopeless word, outdated like macassar oil. Late capitalism and gangster nations (sometimes the same thing) push environmental disaster. Human rights are, as always, being quashed. This O word is the fluff of nostalgia. Here comes Pangloss on his skateboard.
And yet I’ve declared my self a cautious optimist. What in the hell does it mean? And who am I to declare such a thing when the world is quite literally in flames?
One thing I know for sure is that disability has a peculiar demand, perhaps not for everyone who identities this way, but the demand is there and it says get on with it. Get up. Put on your frigging shoes even when you can’t imagine leaving your house. I have whole days when I can’t think about leaving my house. Depression and weariness. You just know you’re going to have another unhappy day in Able-ville. By now I’ve written about this too many times to count.
What I’m talking about it the hard choice to get up. The hard choice to picture something better. The refusal to give in. Its likely I feel like crap. But I’m going out into the indifferent world. Bully for me, you say. I’m with you. Bully. But I don’t have the privilege to succumb to hopelessness. I just don’t. There’s just no way I can afford it.
Pangloss. Skateboard. Candle in the wind. I’m putting my blind shoulder to the wheel.
Maria Popova frames this as a balance rather than a blend: “critical thinking without hope is cynicism, while hope without critical thinking is naïveté.” The Marginalian
There it is.
Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University