“What are you optimistic about?” My teenage son, on an early morning drive to school, offers me a withering side eye instead of a response. I get it and leave him be, but I continue to ponder as I listen to the morning news, which sits like mud, heavy and sloggy.
“Optimism,” like “happiness,” feels like a lot of pressure and, in its abstractness, hard to know what to do with. My son refused the question because he was sleepy (and a 16-year-old boy), but it is also a lame question. Its opaque surface is too smooth for any meaningful handholds. The more I sit with my own question, the more discouraged, helpless, and pessimistic I start to feel.
The poet Ross Gay has a collection of essays (or “essayettes,” delightful!) called The Book of Delights, and I find myself reaching for it as I feel around for something to counter the swampiness puddling in my gut. He writes beautifully about all sorts of delights. He also describes the act of delighting as a form of caring and sharing what we delight in as a kind of “ethics.” This, a sort of ethics of care, offers me a bit more to work with than “optimism.”
With just a little bit of attention and intention, one can participate in an ethics of care immediately and often – make your cup of coffee just the way you like it and one for someone else the way they like it, sprinkle flakey sea salt on your buttered toast, meet your dog’s exuberant and messy welcome home wiggles with even 30 seconds of reciprocal love, let someone know that their sidewalk plantings make you happy every time you walk by. At Urban Pharm, we not only delight in but take seriously the impact of making and offering things with generosity and care. It may not fill the world with optimism nor lighten everything that is heavy, but we do hope to contribute to an everyday experience that feels a smidge more care-full, and that’s something.
Take good care, xoxo Jill