I despise end of year Christmas stories of
hope.
Often they appear in the guise of newspaper
pieces about regular people doing decent things for one another – imagine! --
and the comforting stories about the dog that saved its master, or the old man
who works three jobs and still has time to serve soup at the homeless shelter.
As if these people exist only at the end of the year, or that the value of what
they do can only be measured when the gigantic white tinsel snowflakes are
bolted into place on the light poles of the mall parking lot -- which is, really,
how most of us know the holiday season is upon us.
This year in particular, I note that there are many editorial or
special feature pieces, both in newsprint and on TV, which basically promise,
“It’s been a horrible year, but if you ignore everything else, here’s a story
that proves the incredible valor of some people.”
Well, it has been a horrible year. It's
especially been a horrible year for those of us who follow the news and get
ourselves het up about all those things that are going to destroy our
socio-political structures, boil up the earth, and verify the vapidity of our
intellectual pursuits. A Big Orange Baby got elected President, the
Arctic oceans are hotter than ever, and we are all plugged in to our phones.
Sadly, no story about an old man serving soup to hungry homeless while doing
down three jobs is going to erase that for me. Those stories, like so
many others, are just another version of catastrophising.
But hope, the thing with feathers,
is necessary to keep our equilibrium. Where do we find it if not in the
stories of regular people doing amazing things?
Probably in stories of regular
people doing regular things.
According to every news outlet and
every social commentator, we are at each other's throats. Lunatic religious
elements are trying to murder each and every one of us, our political leaders
to a man and woman are utterly useless, the economy that has turned around for
1% hasn't turned around for 99% at all, most of us are going to be without
healthcare (again) very soon, and everyone knows their neighbor voted for the
wrong guy.
Yet, most times in a parking lot,
if I let someone in and take the space I was eyeing, they give me a nod or a
wave of thanks.
When you chat with the cashier at
the coffee shop they usually say 'good morning', and they thank you if you put
your change in the TIPS jar.
You ask people directions they'll
try and answer.
You start up a conversation with
anyone in a line anywhere -- anywhere --
it invariably works. If it's about the weather or idiots in Washington,
it always works.
We nod to each other and smile at
each other and for the most part we're reasonably decent to one another.
These are regular people doing the
regular things we always do; there's no "end of year" miracle story
here, Except I think it is. It's largely a miracle in the face of
the idiocy of the world around us, manufactured, for the most part, by assholes
we don't know, will never know, who will never talk to us.
The very fact that people get
together and work in a church choir amazes me. The miracle of community
theater, where everyone has "real" jobs, aren't getting paid, are
struggling at a skillset they may not have been given by God, and work till
midnight rehearsing "Good Morning Baltimore" is mind-blowing.
People who crowd fund for a high school student who has just lost both parents in a car accident, or the fact
that people look for their neighbor's lost dog; amazing.
Your political leaders know nothing
of this. Nothing. Believe me on that. Most of people writing wise
pieces for the New York Times haven't the foggiest idea about it.
Certainly anyone with a corner office anywhere in a Manhattan glass tower
is clueless. My guess is the editor who said, "Yeah, it's Christmas,
let's run a tear-jerker about the old man with three jobs who helps out at the
homeless shelter" has never glimpsed this.
Forget them.
It's been a miserable year and our
world is a hot mess. We have screwed things up beyond all repair.
We are being led by Morlocks. Many of our own lives are constant
struggles and we have no one to blame but ourselves, and we know it.
Yet we nod to one another in the
supermarket, we thank the people who pour us a coffee, we chat pointlessly with
strangers, we give up our seat on the bus.
We continue on, feebly, yet
inexorably, with all the power of a polite glacier of decency that can't be
stopped.
