“Who hopes for what is seen?” asks Paul. Me. I do. I did, anyway.
I expressed my hope with the same clichés everyone else did. I reached for something hope-related whenever the subject of a conversation was unpalatable and I did not want to bring anyone down with real life. “Don’t let it bother you too much,” I would say. Why? Because “there’s always hope, right?” It was what I said whenever I didn’t want to become encumbered by the overwhelming injustices and tragedies of our world. And because of my social location, that was possible. I didn’t have to see it if I didn’t want to. I could put the hope Band-Aid on whatever the problem was and go about my life unscathed.
But in March 2020, and for two years following, injustices and tragedies collided. When both the proportion and proximity of the collision exposed the inadequacy of my hope, I wrote this is my online journal:
