The elections this week reminded me to keep my hope alive. I don’t think this is an appropriate place for political endorsements, so I’m not going to make one. But I want to tell a story about how Super Tuesday reinforced my belief in what we’re doing here at Eat Local Challenge.
I avoided thinking about the primary until a few days before the vote. I would get to it in my own jaded and curmudgeonly sweet time. I was feeling indifferent and even hostile about the electoral process. It wasn’t until I saw a campaign video, though, that I understood my own state of mind.
When I watched Obama’s “Yes we can” speech put to music, my first reaction was stony skepticism. But when I got to the (now much quoted) line, “…in this unlikely story that is America, there is nothing false about hope,” I felt my chest start to tighten and my eyes fill with tears. It wasn’t what you might think. I wasn’t crying because I was inspired. I was crying because in that moment I realized just how cynical I have become. I have hoped for change so many times, believed in it, wanted it more than anything, and have been repeatedly burned. I have all but lost hope that this world can ever be the vision of sustainability and community that I hold close to my heart. In that moment, faced with my own harsh gloom, I had a realization: while skepticism may be healthy, cynicism obstructs possibility.
The problems in this world are so daunting. It’s easy to lose hope. It’s painful to have hope and be disappointed. But optimism is the engine of true progress. There are a lot of great quotes about hope out there, but one I really enjoy is from a fellow locavore, Barbara Kingsolver. She says, “The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”
Which brings me back to eating local. It gives me hope. Buying food from a local farmer impacts my world in a positive way. I can foster my own health, support food production methods I believe in, and contribute to the livelihood of someone I like and admire, just by one small act. It’s something tangible, easy, and enjoyable.
I know that local eating alone is not going to change the world. That will require working together and shifting our culture and following a vision and creating new laws and making it appealing for businesses to operate in a sustainable, benign manner. But eating local gives me hope. It recharges my run-down inspiration battery. And I’m going to need that hope, because we have lots of work to do, and it’ll never get done if we’re too damn bitter to get out of bed.
This is the video:
The photo at the start of this post is of a flowering jade plant, Crassula ovata. From jaded to hopeful! (Not my photo--taken by Frank Vincentz and published under a free documentation license.)
Julie Cummins lives in Oakland, CA and is Director of Education for the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA).
