Igniting the Spark
Finding motivation in a time of existential hopelessness
I recently had lunch with an older friend to catch up after they’d been traveling for a while. We started talking about the news and what’s been going on after a while—it feels impossible to catch up with someone these days without some tangential or covert mention of the state of the world coming up at some point in the conversation.
“I really marvel at your generation,” they said between bites of salad.
I gave a curious look over my sandwich, trying desperately to keep it from falling apart and making me look like a fool.
“I don’t know, for people of my generation, it feels like we can’t have any conversations about these tough issues—race, inequality, politics, climate change, tough stuff like that—without this ball of anger getting stuck in our throats, threatening to erupt and cause a scene.”
I took another bite.
“But, for y’all, it seems like you approach it with such cool logic and poise, like you don’t get angry about it all. I really commend you for it, because I always feel like I’m getting on my soapbox or just overly emotional and it feels like it gets in the way of having a productive conversation.”
I put my sandwich, such as it was, down and took a sip of water before replying:
“Actually, I think my generation is incredibly angry. Or, let me at least speak for myself: I am incredibly angry. It’s hard to not check Twitter or read a news article without something infuriating showing up: news about political stalemate in Washington, a report about how we only have a handful of years left to avoid climate change’s most threatening impacts, or an update about how big corporations are avoiding accountability and continuing to act in their own selfish profit-driven self-interest.”
They were keenly listening as I continued.
“It’s hard to pull at one of those threads, trying to examine and grapple with and understand it—let’s say our current political situation, as an example—without unearthing this web of interconnections with a host of other issues, both contemporary and historical. If we think about how our political discourse is so deeply divorced from the lived realities of most Americans—we can’t agree that a schoolteacher who has to buy their own markers and crayons for class shouldn’t pay more in taxes than Jeff Bezos—we ask: why?
“Well, the politicians don’t have any incentive to prioritize the schoolteacher over a billionaire in their policymaking because of campaign finance laws; they’re incentivized to maintain the system, consequences be damned, as we saw in the Great Recession, and the endless War on Terror, and countless other examples even just throughout our lifetimes.
“That alone is upsetting. But, when we think about, given that logical conclusion, how we as the younger generations should have hope that anything will ever change to allow us to escape crippling student debt, or be able to make enough money to pay for a mortgage, or be able to not have to engage in the false equivalency of either paying exorbitant amounts for health insurance or risk one accident plunging us into bankruptcy and poverty, or be able to not have to worry that climate change is going to make it impossible for us and our loved ones to live where we do—to live our lives as human beings, frankly, in the promised American ‘pursuit of happiness’—is a joke. How can we have hope when that’s what we can see lies ahead of us in our lives?
“That eruption of anger your generation feels when talking about these things comes from a place where you still feel like it doesn’t have to be this way, that something can still be done. But I feel, like many people in my generation, I haven’t had that luxury, given what we’ve lived through and where we’re going. I’m angry about everything, so it’s hard to reach the point of exploding, where one thing sets us off. I think that’s how we can approach these conversations in a cooler, more rational way; the emotional backdrop to everything in our lives is anger, anger because it’s pollyannaish to have hope for our future right now. So we can approach these tough conversations not from a point of ‘How on earth is this possible? This isn’t who we are!’ but from ‘How do we better understand this?’ That normally leads to more even-keeled and fruitful conversations.’“
After I finished my sermon, we continued chatting while we finished lunch.
But that conversation had unlocked something in me. The hopelessness that I had logically acknowledged and tacitly accepted swelled over me and emotionally swamped me.
What’s the point of it all? I asked myself.
I didn’t have any motivation for the whole next day, feeling like I couldn’t get out of bed because whatever I had to work on was just pushing pencils in the grand scheme of things, just occupying my time while I tried to distract myself from reality, from how everything was coming down and we are just expected to continue on like nothing’s happening.
After a period of sulking listlessness, thinking about the pivot I’ve made in my professional life to be a freelancer and the commitment I made to writing more–one of the primary reasons for this newsletter—I remembered that, a few months ago, I had created a mind map to sketch out what my purpose and goals were. Maybe that will get me grounded and motivated again, I thought.
“To tell important stories that make an impact.”
One thing that I have held so tightly in my career and life is that stories can change the world.
Can they, though, I asked myself, when I feel like it’s impossible to have any hope for the future, that the world will never change, no matter what?
But stories have changed me so much, I thought.
The story of patriarchal toxic masculinity shaped my entire childhood-and so many men’s entire lives, unfortunately-and hearing others’ stories about being queer or breaking gender norms or being authentic helped me break free from its shackles and chart a new path for my life.
I have lists and playlists and bookshelves full of books and movies and TV shows and podcasts and magazine articles that have had a profound impact on me and helped me reframe the world and my place in it.
I can distinctly remember conversations with people that I’ve had throughout my life where a story they told about their life, a piece of themselves that they revealed to me in a moment of vulnerability and trust, moved me to tears.
Stories remind us of our humanity, that we’re human.
And while that alone might not convince our politicians or the world’s billionaires to act on healthcare or climate change or student debt, it ignites a light in people’s lives.
That reinvigorated sense of humanity is, in fact, breaking down the system, which in every way and on every front does everything it can to categorize and compartmentalize us, to mechanize us and sedate us, to manipulate our emotions and to push us to shrink our worlds and only act out of self-interest. You can’t stand up and advocate for what’s right if you’ve lost touch of your humanity.
Stories are that spark.
So, when I get out of bed and sit down at my typewriter or laptop, I need to remind myself that, even though I’m angry about everything and it feels foolish to have hope for the future, I have a skill and the ability to ignite that spark in others and continuously re-ignite it in myself.
And that, in and of itself, is of the highest value. That’s worth getting out of bed in the morning.
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“There is a power that can be created out of pent-up indignation, courage, and the inspiration of a common cause, and that if enough people put their minds and bodies into that cause, they can win. It is a phenomenon recorded again and again in the history of popular movements against injustice all over the world.” – Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times