May 20 Brain Pickings, Maria Popova
"In my own reflections on hope, cynicism and the stories we tell ourselves, I have considered the necessity of these two poles working in concert. Indeed, the stories we tell ourselves about these poles matter. The stories we tell about our public past shape how we interpret and respond to and show up for the present. The stories we tell ourselves about our private pasts shape how we come to see our personhood and who we ultimately become. The thin line between agency in victimhood is drawn in how we tell those stories.
The language in which we tell ourselves these stories matters tremendously, too, and no writer has weighed the complexity of sustaining hope in our times of readily available despair more thoughtfully and beautifully, not with greater nuance than Rebecca Solnit in
Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities"
to wake, Every Day, and dress in the Things of this Earth, to wear the earth on our bodies and show up and tell out stories