Dear Friend,
This time last year, I was driving home. The sun filtered through a vaulted ceiling of browning leaves. The air was crispier than I expected. A Tracy Chapman song came on through the speaker. I noted down the lyrics that began the song:
Don't you know
They're talking about a revolution?
It sounds like a whisper
It got me thinking about the literal revolution of the planet. It brings with it the changes of the seasons (even when we might not be ready for them). The tide of change is unstoppable.
But it’s not just the seasons that evolve if we wait long enough. Our society is on an unstoppable march towards fairness, kindness, and, as Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
A year on our world has seen more horror than I could have imagined. We’ve borne witness to unspeakable atrocities that continue hourly. It’s made me question the concept of progress.
It’s that earlier bit though, the arc of the moral universe is long.
Atrocities are not new. But this level of global outrage is.
War has been the lurking companion of progress for millennia. Today, with cameras on every corner. With immediate connection to every person on the planet with a click and a swipe. We cannot, like our medieval counterparts, ignore what is happening.
For generations if a conflict didn’t affect people personally, it was deemed irrelevant. That has changed. And so the protests continue, the letters to politicians continue, the grassroots organising and the hope of a better world continues.
We demand a more just society because our moral universe has pulled us in that trajectory. And it will continue to do so.
Reasons to be cheerful (big and little)
Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs performing at the Grammy’s this year (six months or so after I noted her lyrics), in what felt like a cultural reset - a reclaiming of joy and unity.
The positive impact of massive amounts of conservation work on Whale populations:
On the 1st of October, the UK will, for the first time produce no electricity for the national grid through coal.
The most joyful show you could watch on a shortening autumn evening:
Adundhati Roy’s advice on how to stay hopeful:
Child mortality is at an all-time low. Just 120 years ago almost half of all children born, died before they turned 15. That’s every culture, every country, throughout history, every second child. And in the last 120 years we’ve turned the tide so much that child mortality is now less than 5%, and it’s still reducing. Progress is enriching our world with so many people, so many creative, intelligent, loving minds and bodies. As we continue on this trajectory think of how much pain and suffering will be avoided by our collective progress!
This twelve-year-old documentary gave me lots of hope about the environmental headway people are making in pockets around the world that we’re not even hearing about. Also, a great reminder of the importance of soil health:
Soundtrack for Optimism:
This month I’ve added six amazing songs to our optimism playlist. First up, the aforementioned Tracy Chapman. Then Willow’s new song ‘symptom of life’ which has a 7/4 time signature and feels like a really unique pop song for it. Hurt’s song ‘Wonderful Life’ makes an appearance, in a powerful (west country) synth-pop cry for keeping going. The Five Stairsteps ‘O-o-h child’ feels like a hug alongside Bill Wither’s ‘Grandma’s hands’. And no playlist about optimism would be complete without Bob Sinclair’s millennial anthem ‘World, Hold On’. Here it is as an Apple Music Playlist and on Spotify:
With optimism,
Catherine