COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT, THOUGHTS

Thinking about Hope & Community in a Dark and Spooky San Francisco

I woke up to spooky, dark orange skies this morning in San Francisco. “Red Dawn” skies. Spooky Halloween skies. Quick, film your movie about the apocalypse and save on digital effects skies.

It’s not ok.

Blogger/author Mark Manson wrote about hope in his 2019 book Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope and I’m not sure he knew specifically how needed hope would be in 2020. This quote keeps sticking in my head:

“To build and maintain hope, we need three things: a sense of control, a belief in the value of something, and a community. “Control” means we feel as though we’re in control of our own life, that we can affect our fate. “Values” means we find something important enough to work toward, something better, that’s worth striving for. And “community” means we are part of a group that values the same things we do and is working toward achieving those things. Without a community, we feel isolated, and our values cease to mean anything. Without values, nothing appears worth pursuing. And without control, we feel powerless to pursue anything. Lose any of the three, and you lose the other two. Lose any of the three, and you lose hope.”

Mark Manson (emphasis mine)

My people help me survive. This morning my BFF texted me, “Today’s home schooling lesson: terrifying sky.” and somehow the fear I felt when thinking about explaining why the sky was Orange and terrifying — lessened. Community helps. Now I just have to convince my brain that a dark orange sky all day is totally fine. No. Wait. It’s not.

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