Holiday Hope on a Turtle Shell

Faster! FASTER! Beguiled by instant gratification? We all have too much to do—especially before holidays or special events—so we surrender to fast food or packaged food or take-out. Our lives are on fast-forward. Healthy living and family relationships may be shoved into a corner, because we MUST finish a to-do list yesterday.

Beyond wanting the details of life to hurry up and be settled, we also want our goals to hurry up and be realized. I want my novels to earn acclaim faster. Graduates fall into depression when the dream job, the promise of which sustained them through so many classes and tests, doesn’t materialize NOW. Even marriages may be discarded when the “perfect someone” doesn’t seem perfect after a few months—better to simply live together so breaking up is easier.

As an idealist of sorts, I’m always hoping the citizens of the world will become more compassionate, more understanding, and more concerned with preserving all that is beautiful and good. I want improvement NOW. When the current U.S. administration acts on the belief that increasing profit for the richest investors is the top priority because certain people are more worthy of benefits than others—to the detriment of programs meant to improve life for all people, animals, and the planet—my heart falls sodden and dark into the depths of my chest. Worldwide, prejudices spread like a cancer, fed by fear, jealousy, and a hunger for domination. HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN JUST WHEN THE HUMAN RACE SEEMED TO BE MAKING PROGRESS?

I recently finished reading Becoming, a beautifully written, frank self-portrait by Michelle Robinson Obama. Unhappy ending. The dreams of a kinder, more inclusive society that she and her husband worked for in so many different arenas over their young lifetimes today seem to have been thwarted. Yet her reaction after meeting Nelson Mandela resonates with me. Although he spent 27 years in deprived incarceration for his beliefs, Mandela maintained his values and eventually saw his vision for South Africa come to pass. Michelle Obama writes, “…Real change happens slowly, not just over months and years but over decades and lifetimes.”

In an article posted April 26, 2018, in A Wealth of Common Sense, Ben Carlson described “50 Ways the World is Getting Better.” Of course, he was examining the world and not the U.S.A. specifically, but even so, we don’t usually conclude the world is getting better because our perspective is too small. We don’t look at the big picture, and we don’t give change time to evolve.

What if this current crassly outspoken American society, for example—rife with self-serving deception—is merely tearing off the bandage from wounds we were pretending had been healed? So now we have an opportunity to treat the deeper cuts, to cleanse the rotted flesh and start anew. Grass roots movements are more powerful than ever. People who had been satisfied to sit back in apathy are getting involved.

What if one day our descendants will look back at these distressing days with thanks for a more expansive, more brutally honest view of what the human race must do to create the lives we feared were fantasies? What is the holiday season about if not hope? The very word “faith” involves trust. Maybe our better world is already on its way…slowly.