In an interview, I heard Ira Glass say, every episode of This American Life has a particular theme, but in fact, every episode has the same theme: I thought this would happen, and instead this happened. I will talk about this tomorrow evening at a free class Ellen Sussman and I are offering up on writing in the time of Covid. But I woke up thinking about it today and wanted to float it to you now. This week we were supposed to run Sonoma County Writers Camp for five days starting tomorrow, and instead… this one-hour free class. Next week, my oldest is starting high school…online. My youngest was supposed to be starting eighth grade, but that’s now been delayed to the following week as teachers scramble to address online delivery and admin scrambles to address technological equity. These are small inconveniences relative to what other people are facing here and around the globe, as a result of pandemic, as a result of climate catastrophe, and as a result of ongoing and deep inequities.

In a meditation podcast I sometimes listen to, the teacher said she’d been doing some research on the 1918-1920 pandemic. Wars, she said, people celebrate as achievements or at least acknowledge as representing communities, the nation, coming together to support each other. Pandemics people want to forget. It’s true that until this year, my focus on the Spanish Flu was limited–I don’t remember learning much about it or thinking about it as a force in this century. I wrote a whole book on Kafka without really understanding TB as an historical force, either. But oh am I learning and growing now.

So maybe we are living through a time we will want to forget. But it’s still an opportunity. Yes, there are equity issues about online education. But there are equity issues about getting to a campus every day at a certain time, clothed and with your school books. There are equity issues about having hours of homework at times when you might need to work for money or help your household. Instead of lowering our standards for everyone, we need to raise our efforts. Let’s get to work.

Instead of burying ourselves in the news or blindering ourselves in a numb terror, let us acknowledge that the world has always been full of tragic forces and wondrous forces, that if we’ve had the privilege to ignore them and now we can’t, this can open us as artists, as activists, as human beings.

Last week, Michelle Goldberg wrote of John Lewis:  “’In spite of it all, we must be hopeful, we must be optimistic, we must never get lost in a sea of despair,’ Lewis told me three years ago. He wasn’t just describing a disposition. He was describing a discipline.”

It is this discipline of hope we must take up, willfully when necessary, as we battle for a new day. Story prepares us for the unexpected–I thought this would happen, and instead this happened. Story asks, now what? What happened next? That question is ours to answer, friends. Let’s get to work.