Wave Your Butterfly Net at Impossibility

 On my walk this afternoon, I saw a toddler with a butterfly net. He was exceedingly cute - wearing a navy blue jacket and hat, skipping along with his net. The skies were a brilliant blue and the sun was shining, but as it is January in Pennsylvania, it seemed unlikely that he would catch - or even see - an insect of any kind. Even so, the boy ran along waving the net with excitement.

For the rest of my walk, I thought about the boy's optimism. Surely he didn't know that catching a butterfly was impossible today and it's likely that his mom, who walked behind him with her hand outstretched ready to catch him should he fall, just wanted a reason to leave the house. But there was something about the sheer expectation in his gait that made me hopeful. 

Lots of things are impossible and we wave our butterfly nets at them anyway. I wanted to write everyday this month, but I fell off that wagon on the 4th. Here I sit in my sunny living room writing anyway - even though the streak is long gone. It took my son and me four hours to get the Christmas tree outside and clean up from the mess, but we'll forget all that next year when we go to chop down a new one. Virtual school is growing stale and yet I'll spend this evening giving feedback to kids on their work and planning some hopefully fun experiences for them in the coming week. Our nation is a mess and I wanted to have some sage words for how terrible it feels to be part of the racism and ugliness that plagues us, but instead I made space for kids to share how they felt and what they hoped for the in the future.

Yes, the world is a bleak and messy place. While we have an obligation to do something to change that, I believe we also have an obligation to hope. To me, work without hope feels almost futile. 

It's hard to have hope in January any year, but this year it may be extra hard. And yet, I think we need to draw on the hope that is around us to bolster our own fading hope - the hope of longer days, the hope of those who are speaking loudly against people who incited, abetted and implemented violent events of Wednesday, the hope in vaccines that could make returning to actual school a reality and the hope of small kid waving a butterfly net at impossibility.