Despite the best intentions for democracy, our elected officials are never perfect analogs for our own personal ideologies, which is just a fancy way of saying the people you elect will pass laws you disagree with and they will fail to act when you wish that they would. They will disappoint you because, of course, they are human, you are human and our human world is deeply flawed.
To a degree, we all know and expect this. But, man, after a week like last week — the Federal government’s ongoing funding of a genocide in Gaza, the Washington state Legislature’s adoption of three of Brian Heywood’s initiatives and the City of Seattle’s unveiling of an underwhelming new plan for urban development — it can feel like engagement in local politics is truly, deeply pointless.
Why bother showing up to meetings, signing against or in favor of bills or supporting initiatives or candidates if the end result is still a general feeling of malaise and disappointment? What is the purpose of burning the unsustainable resources of our emotional and physical energies trying to make our various communities better when outside forces crush our attempts like walnut shells under their feet?
The one answer I can muster — the one I come back to countless times when I am once again feeling like any kind of salient change is as plausible as boiling the Sound with the heat of a candle — is that the only thing worse than trying endlessly is what would happen if we all stopped trying.
That said, take breaks when you need them. When you feel cynicism creeping in at the edges, curling its gnarled fingers around the door frame, step back. For, like, a day. Don’t look at Twitter. Don’t read your emails.
Go outside and feel the air and look at the clouds. Find a tree that’s older than the oldest thing in your neighborhood and think about what it’s seen. Pet a cat. Volunteer.
Cynicism is the natural outcropping of constant disappointment — but usually, the germ of that disappointment is hope. And hope is a renewable resource if we take the time to mine it.
When it feels like literally every single thing is hard and that no one seems to be trying to make it any less hard, the only thing left to do is find softness. We can revel in our friends, read old books at the library, touch moss, smell coffee beans roasting and know that trying is enough.
Hanna Brooks Olsen is a writer living in Portland.
Read more of the March 13–19, 2024 issue.