It’s hard to watch: the world these days.

It’s hard to watch. I know part of my role is to hold out hope, but that gets more and more difficult with each passing day.

I worry coming into the mid-terms that things may get worse before they get better. Sitting second-term Presidents tend to fade from the limelight post-mid term elections as attention slowly shifts to a future that doesn’t involve him. I fear that our current President does not have the emotional maturity need to take being moved to the back burner with grace and style. What might he do to keep the limelight on him that he hasn’t already done? He’s already started a war, two blockades and forced a regime change – and that was just in the first act. Just for spice, he’s gotten into a feud with the (United States) Pope, scared NATO into figuring out how to defend itself from the US and sent financial and oil markets on a wild, unwelcomed ride. My point is: I’m worried about 2027 and 2028.

I’m worried especially for the people that get left behind. Cubans, Gazans, West Bankers, Iranians. I’m worried for people here in these United States who have all but lost their healthcare insurance. I’m worried for workers being displaced by companies who see the tariff risk as just too great and for those now beginning to worry about the gains in productivity imagined in the AI revolution.

And even with all of that, I do see hope, hiding, largely out of sight, but I see it.

• I see signs of hope in recent Canadian by-elections (sort of a mid term, but just to replace empty seats) that went three for three for left and center-left leaning candidates (two landslides and a change in a long-held right seat), creating a center-left majority in the lower house.
• I see signs of hope in Texas’ US Senate election, with a new voice leading with values and competencies rather than the all-too results-based “it’s the economy, stupid” that got us to where we are today.
• I see signs of hope in a new, United States-born Pope who is following the path formed by his predecessor, unafraid to lead with his (admittedly white, shiny) boots on the ground.
• I see signs of hope at the No Kings Rally. The signs. The contempt for government-brokered hatred.
• I see signs of hope from Mexico, which is rolling out universal healthcare, providing free access to healthcare for all its 120 million citizens starting in 2027.
• I see signs of hope in Alaska where a judge has ruled against commercial efforts to log in the old-growth areas of Tongass National Forest.
• I see signs of hope in California, where bees seem to be developing immunities to the sickness that has caused their rapid decline in populations across North America.
• I see signs of hope in Bihar, India where grain farmers are setting up their own markets, relying on each other rather than Wall Street, Bay Street and Lombard Street for financial security.
• And, lastly, I see signs of hope right here at Emerson, where combined with First UU, we gave 3,460 servings of pet food and $1,976 to help improve the food security of pets (and their people) all across Houston.

I have to always be reminding myself that the hope is out there, I just have to know where to look (or maybe, where not to look) for it.