April 08, 2025
Late last week I was at a book talk presented by GW alum and interim associate vice president for university resilience, Josh Lasky. His book, Every Step is a Gift, is about his 11 years taking care of his father as he lived with Parkinson’s Disease. A central metaphor in the book is a tunnel Lasky found himself in while on a cross-country bike ride. He was following what he thought was a trail, which became narrower, and then barely a trail, then into a tunnel. Water in the tunnel got deeper and the light scarcer, until he was biking in complete darkness and several feet of standing water. He had no choice but to keep pedaling. Eventually, the light grew and the water faded, and he was again biking on a smooth trail in the light.
Josh’s talk brought to mind a book I read earlier this year by Basque American author Julian Zabalbeascoa called What We Tried to Bury Grows Here. The book is historical fiction about the Spanish Civil War told from a Basque perspective, and through a series of overlapping vignettes from different characters and perspectives. Just as Lasky’s book isn’t really about caring for a sick parent, Zabalbeascoa’s book isn’t really about Franco’s conquest of Spain. Both books are about hope.
A couple of weeks ago former US Representative Derek Kilmer spoke to my political communication ethics class. He said that the minister at his church told him that he should be hopeful rather than optimistic because hope is active while optimism is passive. A few days later, completely coincidentally, my father texted me a line from the late poet Seamus Heaney - “Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.”
Our world can feel daunting. Classes, jobs, internships, politics, world events, and more can pile up like garbage in a vacant lot. It’s up to each of us to decide what to do about the pile. We can surrender to it, convinced there will only ever be more garbage. We optimistically believe that one day the garbage will be gone. Or we can hope that with our efforts, the efforts of those around us, we can clean the lot and turn it into a park.