Hope
We’re four weeks into 2021, but I’m only now starting to feel like this is a new year. Maybe it was the constant onslaught of news about violence and instability. Or maybe it was because the weather felt a little bit too warm for January. Or maybe, it was the fact that before this week, I hadn’t felt hope in a long time.
The other day, I laid in bed until 5AM, unsuccessfully awaiting sweet slumber. Instead, I received the opposite, an unending barrage of thunder all night. After giving up my ambitions of unconsciousness, I built up my bunker of blankets and learned all there was to know about vaccines, in preparation for my grandma’s first dose the next day. I knew the vaccine was perfectly safe, but I wanted to know if and when there would be enough doses to bring things back to normal. Learning the hundreds of millions of doses that would be available by the summer-time was a revelation — our endless night had an expiration date.
The date may shift around, as logistics and reality enter the situation, but after months of seeing calendars as exercises in futility, it feels like there’s finally a light at the end of the tunnel. We’ve come a long way from those days in March when we guessed that things would be normal in June or maybe August, but definitely before October. None of us knew anything but continued to make up random dates that we wished would save us.
Yet, even with our new knowledge, I’m trying not to focus simply on dreams of what I’ll do next. No, 2020 already showed every aspiring traveler what a folly planning ahead can be. I’d like to focus on this feeling of hope — not for a particular dream or moment or adventure or destination but cling to this hope as a guiding light. I don’t want the hope to stop at concerts or vaccinations. I want hope to be a throughline in my life’s story. I can see it now, “2021 was the year when the hope really began and never stopped in Nikhil’s life.”
I’ll hold onto hope. That even when this darkness is gone and another appears, there will be an end incoming, long before I can see it. I’ll use that hope to drive me, to guide me, to move me to action. At least I hope so.
Drops of the Week
ALBUM - Overgrown by James Blake - this is one of my favorite albums of all time and I listened to it while writing today's letter.
ARTICLE - "Vaccinated People Are Going to Hug Each Other" by Julia Marcus - good read about how people may act when vaccinations begin to occur.
FILM - Before Sunset - oh to walk around a European city and talk about love
The new president may not be a white supremacist, but there's still work to be done. With each day, we move closer to a more equitable world. Reminders:
Ways you can help Mutual Aid Networks
Anti-racism resources
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Hopefully,
Nikhil