Why to have hope when there's no clear answer in sight.
[I am on a safari in Tanzania (!) so am posting a favorite blog when I heard an inspiring story during dark days of the pandemic, and it felt there was no end in sight. I think similar feelings are afoot. Read on for the historical event that gave me hope.]
An archive blog written in October 2020.
I hope you’re finding peace.
Last time I wrote a blog was December 2019. Back then we were all humming along with our comfortable plans and cushy routines neatly mapped out in front of us.
Back then my goal was to double-down on revising my novel. Its due date loomed in June.
Back then I had airline tickets purchased for trips and ran to the grocery store on a whim and ate hurried meals at the kitchen island and rarely saw neighbors and went months without speaking to family members and never had enough time.
Not always peaceful.
Busy.
That was then.
But now here we are —ten months later — in a world so different that even if we’d imagined it. . . No, we wouldn’t have imagined it, would we? . . A world that today begs for peace amidst turmoil and fear.
It’s been really hard.
There have been so many times when my heart thudded in my chest for no external reason. Just an internal dread and anxiety that so many things felt out of whack and dangerous.
Out of control.
Helpless.
So, in response, I amped up my little planner part and dug in: Set up a weekly Zoom with the neighbors. Switched dinner from the kitchen island to a table with cloth napkins and placemats. Joined virtual “write-ins” with other women's fiction authors across the country. Zoomed with family. Showed up at peaceful protests. I leaned into more activity, creating new connections and reigniting old ones.
But still, needling worry threads still pulled into knots of anxiety throughout my days.
I was grabbing control wherever possible. Setting up a bunch of new commitments in my calendar. Yet, I didn’t really feel better. More like a hunkering down.
I yearned to feel a peace that was ironclad and battle-tested — not a weak surrender to dark days — but a conviction that could pile weight on an existential scale dragging us down toward the side marked: “We’re all screwed.”
Instead, doing my part to swing us to “We’re all going to be all right.”
Don’t you feel it too? A yearning not to be in a constant state of turmoil and trigger-reactions? Perhaps that’s the first step, the pang of protest that opens up space for solutions to emerge even when the world looks despairingly bleak.
It’s possible that right now mind-blowing solutions to our stink-y-est problems are already in the works. Here’s a story that shows exactly that.
I mean, literally.
Inspiring Story of Innovation
In research for my book one of the important backdrops to my story is the pace of industrialization and growth of urban areas around the turn of the twenty-first century. People flocked to cities from the countryside. London, Paris and New York streets were filled with horse-drawn transportation: hansom cabs, carts, surreys and even twelve horse-drawn buses.
In fact, demand for transpiration was so great that in NYC, 100,000 horses carried people and goods throughout its metropolis. Good progress, right?
Well, yes, and no. The influx of people brought energy, labor, innovation —just what the new century needed.
Yet, all those horses created an unanticipated problem. Daily, a single horse generates 15 to 35 pounds of manure. That meant that In NYC alone 3 to 4 million pounds of manure gaggingly plopped onto the streets every day.
Plus, the horses were pissing 40,000 gallons of urine into the muck every day too. And since horses were deployed to haul away the sewage, still more manure piled up. And to make matters even worse, the droppings attracted huge clouds of flies — carriers of typhoid fever — dangerously increasing the risk of spreading disease.
In desperation, in 1898 the world's first international urban planning meeting was held in NYC. Planned as a 10-day conference, after just three days the participants abandoned it. No one could see a solution. It was impossible to control the mess they’d created. Impossible to stop the transfer of people and goods into these growing cities so dependent on horses.
Progress had created an unintentional, insurmountable mess.
With no solution in sight, it felt hopeless.
But as the men sped back to their home cities and countries, little did they know that a solution was actually already underway.
An answer that not a single one of them could have fathomed.
Solution Already Underway
This crazy, unheard-of, unfathomable fix was a brand-new idea. Karl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler and others were working on the design of a horseless carriage, the automobile. And when Henry Ford created a production process that made vehicles affordable, cars began to replace horses at lightning speed.
By 1912, motorcars outnumbered horses on the streets of New York and London. By 1917, the very last horse-drawn carriage retired.
Just think: Even as people gagged behind their handkerchiefs in 1898 and all those urban planners despondently fled their meeting, right then an answer germinated.
A so-called insurmountable problem: Solved.
Power of Imagination
Another car maverick (yes, scandalmonger), and innovator Elon Musk, once said, “The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.”
It’s possible for us to have a peaceful government. A healthy earth. Tolerant conversations in which participants are willing to work through the complexities of issues with a mutual willingness not to jump into defense or attack when there’s a whiff of disagreement.
Again: I’m imagining that right now mind-blowing solutions to our stink-y-est problems are already in the works. It’s possible for our country to come together. It’s possible for us to live on our planet without harming it. It’s possible for us to participate in a world of thoughtful discourse and inclusion that respectfully welcomes and cares for its beautiful mix of people and life.
It’s possible to live in peace.
There is power in imagination. For what we see — what we state and dare to declare — manifests.
Take a moment. Write your own “what’s possible” statement. What can you imagine?
Warmly,
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