My Optimism Wears Steel-Toed Boots

Dear Courageous Leaders,

I’ve been thinking a lot about optimism. I find that I occupy a space that I have rarely found myself in; a space where the struggle is daily to maintain optimism about the future.

My certainty that the next generations will experience a better world—that I will experience a better world—has vanished. And I’m trying to reconcile this with my belief in the capacity of humanity to “do better.”

The experience of a global pandemic seemed to illuminate an existential difference between two perspectives about the world and our humanity. Ironic perhaps, that it is aptly expressed in the adage about whether you are holding a glass that is half empty or half full.

The expressions of love and empathy, the creative and innovative ways of building connections and collaborating while physically isolated, the putting aside of deeply entrenched differences and silos to do so, the daily heroic acts of those risking their lives to help others, the ways we honored those working on the front lines: these moments were a source of hope during the pandemic. A source of hope that sustained my optimism for the ways in which we might emerge from the crisis “doing better.”

But as we settled into a long siege, we witnessed the rise of countless actions anchored in fear and hate and designed to catalyze violence, increased calls for isolationist, fascist, and short-termism agendas, systems bleeding and breaking, a widening gap between the wealthy and poor, a shrinking gap between moderate and radical, raging tempers, rising temperatures, and communities of peoples displaced by the consequences of climate change. All increasingly louder sources of the horrific possibilities I now imagine for a post-pandemic future.

I have intimate knowledge of what it is to persist in the face of an uncertain and grim future. At 17, after growing up very physically active, I experienced sudden onset paralysis, caused by an extremely rare and life-threatening malformation of the arteries and veins at the top of my spinal cord and the base of my brain. After weeks of my family not knowing whether I would live or die, I was stabilized. At that point doctors told me it was likely I would never walk again, and I realized that I also faced a lifetime of uncertainty and fear—fear of living with an extremely volatile and dangerous medical condition, that when triggered could result in paralysis, brain damage, or death.

I had choice. It was a choice throughout the rest of my life that I often made daily. It was a choice to show up with optimism and hope, even when the odds were stacked against me. 

Perhaps that I did walk again, that I also faced and lived through two more life-threatening bleeds, cemented a belief in the power of “walking through the world” with optimism and hope in the miracles of humanity and the joy that can be found in every moment of every day. 

My journey that started at least 30 years ago, and the path I am on, requires courage: courage of action, faith, and an honest reflection on the fears and hopes I have inside me.Today, when I have moments in which I wonder if my dogged optimism is for fools and idealists, I find that I can’t seem to give up on my hope that humanity’s capacity to surprise, delight, create wonder, and yes, even overcome immensely hopeless circumstances, will persist. We may never end our suffering and pain; in fact, it may not be desirable, for it is only through it that we can see what must be guarded so fiercely: our hope and joy.

A few years ago, someone anonymously gifted me with a slip of paper in my office mailbox that had the following quote by Henry Rollins on it: “My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.” It instantly became a personal philosophy that adorned my laptop and now graces my office wall. I think I might modify it to proclaim:

       My optimism wears steel-toed, shit-kicking boots and is unapologetic and loud.

Still walking my learning journey,