Hope Notes: Olympics
“Somebody else has it worse than me right now.”
True. Always true. And yet:
We’re not holding a Grief Olympics this year instead of the postponed Tokyo Games. It’s not necessary for you to win a medal in Crappy Situations before you let yourself feel sadness, anger, and frustration with how things are right now.
Prom got canceled. You miss that bagel shop by the office. The color of your bedroom walls seemed like a good idea last summer, and now it’s making you crazy.
Still, you know that some people are very sick. Others are working in unsafe conditions. Lots of folks are out of work. Maybe they don’t have the support or the relatively good situation you might have.
Refusing to let yourself feel everything right now doesn’t make things better for those other people. You’ll use up a lot of your own energy fighting the inner battle over whether or not to let those barbarian feelings through the gate, and in the process you’ll end up tired and cranky. It’s hard to motivate yourself to help others from that starting point.
You want to get to a place where you can help someone else? Open your own gates - as slowly as you need. Accept that life is hard, in a hundred different ways, for just about all of us right now. They’re valid feelings. We’re not competing!
If you’re not ready to stand up and do something for those in need today, tomorrow will work fine. We’ll be at this for a while. We can take turns.
Road to Recovery
As of yesterday, there are at least 970,673 people worldwide who have tested positive for COVID-19 and have fully recovered. This is an increase of 261,132 since our last edition - more than a quarter of a million people just in one week. An unknown number more have encountered the virus on their own and made a full recovery.
We hope for peace in the lives of those who are actively suffering right now, and we hope for strength in the lives of everyone who has lost a loved one or friend in the midst of this crisis. We also hope for wisdom in our leaders as they make difficult choices about public safety in the weeks and months ahead.
Good Moves
How people are practicing generosity, ingenuity, and love around us right now.
On this last one, you’ll want to click through for the rest of the story.
Family Circle
Parents and kids finding loopy joy in their daily lives.
I wish for all the world that we had a photo of this moment:
It’s important to know when reading this item that the daughter in question is 5 years old:
Lots of Dads are out there getting filmed and interviewed on TikTok by their kids while everybody is at home. Twitter user Sarah_Woolley compiled a huge collection of these videos, and these two are among the best:
And Finally…
A couple of you made me aware of El Arroyo, a restaurant in Austin, Texas that is playing the restaurant sign game on another level. They’ve even published a series of books documenting their best ones. Here are some recent greats:
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Be well, everyone.
- Michael
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