On this sunny 4th of July morning in the year 2024, my dogs are nervously biting their toenails as fireworks intermittently explode all around us (this will only continue in fervor and intensity as the day wears on). I feel no joy or sense of celebratory enthusiasm, but am instead battling what feels like a weeks long panic attack. In the midst of all this, I stumbled upon a quote from the self-proclaimed illustrator with yellow hair Katie Abey:

“Shoutout to anyone who is currently using a great percentage of their energy on keeping a tiny flame of hope alight every single day while a shitstorm of uncertainty and heaviness swirls around them.”

I’ve bolded this in Heading style 4 as it seemed the only appropriate way to convey the magnitude of this message, because damn, it is a shitstorm out there right now. As a former high school English teacher who taught both The Diary of Anne Frank and Night by Elie Wiesel, I’m currently witnessing some deeply uncomfortable parallels. The word “unprecedented” has been bandied about so much in the last year that it sometimes feels like we jumped the track somewhere and are now living in an alternate time line.

As I type this, my chest is tight, my head hurts, and I’m feeling nauseous. Adding a chronic and persistent state of anxiety to my list of medical conditions has done me no favors. I can’t keep going like this, something has to give. How then, do I stay sane while the world around me seems to be falling apart? How do we as a collective prevent ourselves from losing hope and spiraling down the proverbial drain?

I’ve been finding little nuggets of wisdom in the stacks of books procured from my local library as of late (might as well read everything I can while these precious institutions still exist). A particularly poignant insight stuck out to me this morning and inspired this very post. It’s at the very end of the chapter Harbor Lights from A Life in Light: Meditations on Impermanence by Mary Pipher:

“I willed myself to remember everything and to cache it deep in my memory. I never wanted the slightest detail to disappear. That night I taught myself the skill of storing moments of revelation and joy. It is a useful skill in a world filled with at least as much shadow and sunlight.”

Strangely powerful isn’t it? The idea of deliberately holding onto the moments of joy and beauty in life, stowing them away in our brain like little parcels to be unwrapped in moments of bleak darkness. In times of uncertainty, fear, and grief taking care of ourselves can’t be put on a back burner. Tending to our mental, physical, and emotional health is imperative.

Even when our resources feel like they are precious few and we are barely clinging to the scraps of our own humanity as we struggle to balance our responsibilities and fears with our sense of self - even then we must persist. We must dig deep and conjure up those memories of joy and revelation. We must create those moments in the still small hours before the morning light, in the nooks and crannies of our hectic lives. Moments of joy and their memories are what will sustain us when the weight of the world feels to heavy to bear.

Read good books, wear the fancy dress on a random Tuesday, take a walk outside and inhale deeply, feel the sun on your face. Start a gratitude journal and record even the tiniest things that bring you joy. Write letters to your friends, call your mom, have an impromptu tea party in the park. Be wild and weird defiantly. Make no apologies for nurturing your spirt and letting the inconsequential things fall away. Your happiness is worth fighting for; making and preserving these beautiful memories is worth fighting for.

I have no doubt that I will be reminding myself of these truths over and over in the coming days. I will bookmark my own writing and come back to it in the moments I succumb to hopelessness. I will earmark the quotes and passages from other authors that stoke my headstrong spirit. I will cultivate the art of remembrance. I will encourage others to lean into their joy. Dear reader, it is up to us to keep the fire burning and stoke our neighbors embers when we see them losing light. Paraphrasing the words of Katie Abey, stand strong in that shitstorm and keep that flame of hope alight 🔥

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