Hope

by Tida Bradshaw and Ben Duckworth

Tida:

I don’t think there’s ever been a time, at least for me in my lifetime, where I’ve ever felt more hopeful. It’s not necessarily a positive, if things were wonderful all the time there would be no real need for hope. It takes a trough to aspire to a peak, and currently the world is enduring a deep trough.

I feel, in a strange way, that we had this coming. Let me be clear here, that is absolutely not to say that anyone deserves to be ill or to suffer at all. In my late teens and early twenties, I never really fully engaged with politics or kept as up-to-date with the news. But the absolute sordid state of things forced me to wake the hell up and take note of who was making decisions about my future, the country and our world. We’ve outdone the political comedians and satirists — our reality is far more strange and bleak than they could have predicted. Or perhaps actually the outlandish political pictures they painted were spot-on. Every year since 2016 has consistently surprised me (and increasingly not surprised me, sadly) who has been voted in to power, how we’ve ignored climate change, how we’ve been increasingly filled with spite, anger and hate. And then this year Coronavirus has hit us.

Something had to give. It’s genuinely sad that it’s taken a globally-affecting virus to inspire some sort of shift, but I really do hope that there will be good that comes out of this horrible time.

Our massive reduction in pollutive daily activity has allowed pockets of the natural world to take a breather and start to recover in quite a shockingly powerful way. The world has been crying out for help for so long and has been so defiantly ignored, tiny gestures (“make sure you recycle!”) aren’t nearly enough, and here we are, showing that we could actually make a huge difference if we really wanted to.

Distance has made me feel closer to people. It’s a strange paradox, and a common convention — ‘distance makes the heart grow stronger’ — but I’ve never really experienced that until now. Distance has usually made me feel more, well, distant. And yet now I’m communicating with friends more than I ever have. The sadness I’m feeling that I can’t see my partner now I know will be met with utter joy when we can, and this forced separation has made us value each other and our relationship deeply. I feel incredibly lucky to have such good friends and family, and there is a genuine presence of true support, even if it is through video chats and text messages, they mean a lot.

Even strangers have never felt closer. On my government-sanctioned daily walks, I’ve noticed an air of quiet camaraderie. I guess there has never, in recent years, been something that has affected absolutely everyone in quite the same way. People have been extending a helping hand (from a safe 2 metre distance) to support those who may have been isolated prior to this and are now genuinely alone and need help, those who are ill, those who need support in any physical or mental capacity. We’ve all been searching for ways that we can do something good, whatever form that might take. And that is genuinely amazing. It fills me with hope that this can continue after the pandemic.

Never before has the dichotomy of the distribution of wealth been exposed in such a stark and important way. Within a day, people’s whole social and economic structures collapsed — jobs were lost, finances were up in the air, families distanced. We have all been carved up and stranded on our own lot. Whatever you had at the end of February is what you got, and if that was £200,000 in the bank or £20 or £2000 in debt then so be it, without any way in sight of how to mobilise yourself to change that.

Even when the Chancellor of The Exchequer’s plan was outlined as to what we could expect as a financial lifejacket, so many people slipped through the aid gaps, and bold promises of small business loans and help for all have proven not exactly that. Mortgage forbearance is good for those who are struggling with payments, however so many renters have found no such breaks and are in real dire circumstances.

How ironic that now, after Boris and the Tory like, belittled NHS staff by voting against a much needed and deserved pay increase, they’re singing their praises and harking how vital their work is! It has always been vital. It has always been incredibly hard work.
Delivery drivers, supermarket staff, hospital staff, transport staff, food and drinks producers . . . the spotlight has never before shone so brightly on the working classes, and yet all the praise in the world won’t stop those people being more at risk of getting ill at the moment, and won’t reward them financially. You can talk all you like Johnson, but put your praise where your pockets are. I hope this exposition will result in a levelling. As more and more people are experiencing, who might have been comfortable before, what it is to be financially unstable and to be poor and to be scared about the future, this demands a change.

I hope you at this moment are doing OK. I hope that your family and friends are OK. I hope that we’ll all at the very least be OK after this pandemic settles, and I really actually genuinely hope that everyone will be far more than OK in the future.

—

Ben:

hope

/həʊp/

noun

a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen.

Eight weeks ago, myself and my mates put on the biggest event any of us had ever been involved in. We put right all the things we’d bollocksed up in past years, and people genuinely seemed to love it.

We were so full of hope for our future endeavours.

It seems like a lifetime ago.

Three weeks later the world I recognised had stopped turning, and I was laid up with the worst lung, heart and abdomen pain I’d ever known, unable to get up, concentrate, think or do anything other than watch rolling news. (I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone btw.)

As the days and nights became almost indistinguishable, I was ever more convinced that I - and a huge percentage of the planet - wouldn’t survive this awful new scourge. The media seemed to almost delight in the hopelessness of it all. But as the days and weeks progressed though, I randomly found myself reciting a line from my favourite Harvey Milk speech: “… you, and you, and you… you’ve gotta give them hope.”

Thanks Harvey. I needed that.

I’m much better now. My lungs still hurt and I still get tired easily, but I feel stupid for the level of worry to which I’d allowed myself to plummet. People all over the planet are dying in unimaginable pain, and mine was but a minor inconvenience against their suffering.

Was it COVID-19 and resulting pneumonia? I don’t know, because I still haven’t at any point been tested. My GP told me that he thought it was, but seemed genuinely embarrassed that he couldn’t tell me for certain. My heart breaks for him, and for all the NHS professionals so badly let down by a government interested only in cash and self-preservation.

I hope they face a reckoning for what they’ve done. Enough is enough.

Here are some other things that I hope for. It’s a stream of consciousness rather than an ordered wish list; there’s no hierarchy.

· That health is consistently put ahead of money in every discussion about relaxing lockdowns.

· That people’s creative spirit and love of questioning remains active when the world reopens. To see the human brain being properly engaged again is joyful. Please don’t let this go.

· That New York City recovers. My favourite city on earth, in unimaginable pain — again because of political decisions.

· That the essential workers currently being deified are simply paid properly when this is over.

· That the spacing and respectful conduct offered to each other through these unique times, continues into normality.

· That my mum doesn’t get coronavirus, and that the care home she left just before the outbreak is alright.

· That Donald Trump is comprehensively voted out of office, and never gets anywhere near any position of power, ever again.

· That my friends and family all survive this, and come out of it with ideas of what they’d like their futures to be. And act on them.

· That the industry I work in becomes a kinder, more vibrant, more benevolent place. Money and greed have replaced creativity and passion. I suppose you could apply this to the world as a whole, really…

· That there isn’t a massive, uncontrollable outbreak of Coronavirus in the developing world.

· That the planet is allowed to continue to recover from decades of unchecked poisoning. The recent lowered CO2 levels are inspiring, exciting and wonderful.

· That our amazing scientists nail a vaccine, so that people can be less scared. And then…

· That people learn to hope again. It’s such a powerful tool.

Actually, what I wrote earlier was a lie. I do have one overarching, passionate hope. The sense of community and locality that’s sprung up in recent weeks has made my heart sing. I hope it’s never forgotten and in fact grows and grows. Community should be dominant in the human experience, and yet it’s become almost a dirty word in recent times in the face of big brand, multinational dominance.

Locality should inform all our purchasing decisions as a species.

Don’t forget who was there for you in the tough times, and make sure you’re there for them in the good times.

It’s time for a reset. A big one. It’s already happening.

You’ve gotta give them hope.