The Preconditions for Hope

Roundtable-planning for my proposal about the affective drives for performance continues apace. I've sent out invitations; I'm waiting on yeses or noes. Love and outrage are onboard. We'll see about joy, patriotism (or nostalgia), devotion, and whatever LF wants to do (if she says yes)/

And I'm delaying committing to hope or nihilism.

I should do hope. What gets me out of my doom spirals, I told my therapist yesterday, is teaching. When I'm teaching students, I cannot project pessimism and nihilism to them. I may loathe myself for my white male Americanness, but I cannot stand self-loathing in my students. It's Fred Rogers all the way: There's no one else in the whole world like you, and you are capable of loving and being loved just as you are.

There are few things I hold for certain. When I say that Rogers message to students, though, I deliver it with as much certainty and conviction as I can muster. There's no room for hedging. There's no room for doubt or exceptions.

I once asked my sister (wisest person I know, mental health counselor) about the ethics of assuring small children that everything's going to be all right. It's literally not true. She allowed that, of course, bad things happen to everyone, children included. Of course, telling children that nothing unpleasant will ever touch them their whole life long would be a recipe for dysfunction. But when a parent tells a frightened child that they'll be OK--most of the time--it's not a literal prediction of the future. It's a promise: I love you. I am with you. I will do my best to stay with you and protect you.

She reminded me of a snippet from Won't You Be My Neighbor (the excellent documentary on Mr. Rogers). Mr. Rogers (very young in this clip) tells of one of his first encounters with a group of small children. One of the kids shows him a stuffed animal, telling him that its arm came off in the wash. This was a test, Mr. Rogers reflected. They waited to see how Mr. Rogers would respond. Would he swoop in and save them from their fear? (But your mommy fixed it, didn't she? It's all better now!) Instead, he asked a question: Our arms don't fall off when we wash them, do they? The kids, delighted that someone pinpointed their real fears here, responded enthusiastically.

The point, my sister said, isn't the factual status of Mr. Rogers's statement. Sometimes, indeed, children do lose limbs. But what the kids are asking isn't Do bad things ever happen? but Can I trust you to love me? Children need a foundation of trust and consistent care in order to thrive.

So do my students need something other than the yawning nihilism of my own pathologies. They have troubles aplenty. They're stressed, busy, going into debt, and terrified of the future. They're struggling to discover who they are apart from the family patterns they've learned throughout their childhood.

They aren't children. They know bad things happen. But they can all use a bit of Mr. Rogers certainty, the thing that is true by virtue of its affirmation: You are precious. You are loved. You can love just as you are.

There's a hope in that, or at least the preconditions for hope.