Little bites of hope

by Julie Cummins

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).

Comments

[Kathy]

YES WE CAN

[Anita]

The thing I love best about this video isn't the haunting way it comes back to me at odd times. it isn't the inspiring oratory, or the simple-perfect visuals. It's the fact that five different people -- of both genders and disparate ages -- have told me, unbidden, that it brought them to tears.

[Rose]

Never give up hope. I watched my roman catholic republican grandmother turn her back on bush and say she could never forgive him the war. Recently another republican friend asked what was the best way to switch her family over to organic food. With people willing to change like that there is always hope.

[budding gardener]

Thank you so much for writing this. I hadn't realized that I was trying to ignore the big problems we face, hoping they would go away.

[Bri]

Julie, what a poignant article. I so appreciate you talking about hope, as I am an eternal optimist, but have recently felt...less so. Your revelation "while skepticism may be healthy, cynicism obstructs possibility" is such a profound and honest one. It isn't good for us to just take life at face value, but we absolutely can get stuck in allowing cynicism to take center stage and cut off all connection to the wonder of life. I didn't realize how much I wanted Obama to win the primary until I saw just how neck and neck it was on Super Tuesday and found myself really rooting for him. Alas, my state (CA) didn't feel the same way, but he has the potential to inspire millions.

[Kat and Anna]

Thank you Julie for such a honest post.

There is a lot to be said about hope, Let's start in our communities, we can hope that others will make the shift to support and celebrate their local foods.

It really is all about educating and offering alternative views even in politics, thats where we are starting!

Happy Farming,
Kat and Anna
www.localchoicescv.com

[expatchef]

The speech does indicate that government should not serve special interests only. To put this back into a direct impact on eating local, the other candidate on the Democratic side, Clinton, is backed by Big Ag lobbyists.

Clinton appointed Joy Phillipi, former president of a the National Pork Producers Council — the main trade group representing CAFO operators — as the co-chair of Rural Americans for Hillary.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, during the 2007-2008 election cycle, Clinton was the #1 senate recipient of donations from all of the following industries: agribusiness, food and beverages, food processing and sales, food stores, crop production, sugar cane and sugar beets, restaurants and drinking establishments, and lobbyists

Clinton's campaign held a “Rural Americans for Hillary” lunch and campaign briefing at the Washington, DC offices of Troutman Sanders, the lobbying firm of agribusiness giant Monsanto.