I met a man this morning who had a deer-in-the-headlights gaze and stuttered to speak. He choked out an apocalyptic scenario of our country’s inevitable destruction at the hands of our political, racial, environmental, and medical crises.
It was early.
The man’s dire assessment set my stomach roiling and knees trembling. I had to sit down.
I found myself inhaling deep breaths and powering off my TV, radio, and computer so I could reflect quietly for a few minutes.
That’s when I remembered my favorite Don Quixote quote from the play MAN OF LA MANCHA: “Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”
That staring, stuttering man was me.
He greets me in the mirror when I hear the first reports of our country’s impending rendezvous with catastrophe.
And yet the Don Quixote man is also me — the one who believes in idealism and redemption.
In this time of unprecedented crises and dire scenarios, the second man fights as an underdog.
But although underdogs have a mixed record of victories and defeats, in this case, I am betting on him.
With the stakes so high, he knows that defeat is not an option, so he will fight against cynicism and despair until he either wins or dies.
Can you relate to this struggle?
How do you keep fighting when the odds against you grow increasingly impossible?
I turn to my Christian faith, which is rooted not in human optimism but in divine hope.
Hope is what we have left when all our reasons for optimism and our abilities to think positively dry up.
And hope is what defeats pessimism in the end — no matter how sane it may appear right now.
Don Quixote said it best: “. . . and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”