I can’t.  I’m sor­ry.  Bas­ta.  I’ve tried, but I can’t.

I just can’t keep the brave face on all the time.  I can’t have the right words at the ready all the time.  Some­times I can’t keep the wrong words from spew­ing out of my mouth (or, more like­ly, my fin­gers) in a moment of anger.  I don’t always remem­ber to check my sources, and I’m actu­al­ly pret­ty lousy at assum­ing pos­i­tive intent in dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions.  Hell, some­times I can’t even sum­mon the courage just to smile at strangers.  Some­times even a frickin’ smile, a 16-mus­cle acknowl­edge­ment of shared human­i­ty, feels like too much effort to offer the world.

I can’t be the per­son I wish I were.  I’ve tried.  But I can’t.

Yes­ter­day was one of those days when I felt like the “good guys” were pro­found­ly out­num­bered over­pow­ered.  Stu­dents and col­leagues and acquain­tances that I know to be opti­mistic, hard-work­ing peo­ple with good hearts and souls, strug­gled to peer out through a kind of sad­ness, of fatigue.  Snarky half-attempts at humor were deliv­ered through lips-only smiles, while eyes plead­ed for encour­age­ment, for com­fort, for strength.

At least, I know that’s why my eyes were plead­ing for.

I lay in bed last night for hours, star­ing at the ceil­ing and won­der­ing how in the name of any­thing I could make a difference—how I could resist the oppres­sors, how I could be an ally to the oppressed in more than name and token.  But most of all I lay there feel­ing guilty because I. am. just. so. damn. tired.

It does­n’t seem fair—and to my friends in minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties, this para­graph of priv­i­leged whin­ing may be one you want to skip over—that nice guys seem indeed to fin­ish last.  It does­n’t seem fair that play­ground bul­lies seem always to know when the teacher isn’t look­ing.  It does­n’t seem fair that hoard­ing pow­er seems so much more effec­tive than shar­ing it.  It does­n’t seem fair that priv­i­lege is blind and love speaks soft­ly and the high road always seems to have way more detours than the low.

I lay there last night want­i­ng to weep, but too tired even to do that, feel­ing use­less and help­less and ashamed of my appar­ent inabil­i­ty to use my vast priv­i­lege for any­thing oth­er than self-pity.

But this morn­ing, with the ris­ing sun strug­gling to break through the Penn­syl­va­nia fog and the finch­es call­ing blind­ly to one anoth­er in the Jan­u­ary air, I had an epiphany of sorts.

A prayer attrib­uted to Saint Fran­cis of Assisi asks:

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, par­don;
Where there is error, truth;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is dark­ness, light;
And where there is sad­ness, joy.

I love that prayer.  But this morn­ing I real­ized that there’s some­thing miss­ing from Fran­cis’s list.  So as of today, I pledge:

Where there is fear, I will sow grat­i­tude.

Because while fear par­a­lyzes, grat­i­tude empow­ers.  While fear excludes, grat­i­tude invites.  While fear clutch­es, grat­i­tude opens.  And while fear shouts, grat­i­tude whis­pers.

So I will whis­per grat­i­tude.  To one per­son at a time, one appre­cia­tive moment at a time, I will use thanks­giv­ing to dri­ve out fear.  I will do so because it helps me to tear my eyes away from the vio­lent­ly fear­ful place the world is becom­ing, and focus on the world I believe is worth sav­ing.  I will do it because hear­ing words of grat­i­tude can make the dif­fer­ence between a sleep­less night of self-pity, and a cared-for soul that is ready to speak truth to pow­er.

There is so much to be grate­ful for.  And while I can’t always live by my best lights, I can be grate­ful for the times I do. And more impor­tant­ly, I can be grate­ful for the peo­ple in my life who remind me of what those best lights are, and how love real­ly does work in the world.  May our grat­i­tude rip­ple out­ward and fuel the work that lies ahead.