The great fear

| 9:09 am EST March 9, 2021
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This week I did something for the first time in about thirteen months: I bought concert tickets. The show isn’t until later in the year, and a number of things have to go right between now and then, in terms of vaccinations, herd immunity, and so on. But there was this tinge of an unfamiliar feeling: hope.

In truth, buying concert tickets in this environment feels a lot like buying a lottery ticket: you don’t really expect anything to come of it, but if it does work out, the result will be amazing. I mention this personal anecdote because I suspect it mirrors what a number of Americans are feeling right about now, or have already begun feeling, or will end up feeling as we get into the spring and summer. That feeling is the fear of hope.

For four years in general, and for the past year in particular, everything has been about fearing the worst and trying to find ways to minimize the damage. If you had to stay home for yet another day, but no one you know caught the virus, it was a good day. The idea that something could go right has become almost foreign. Yes, we won the election, and we’ve seen major tangible damage control put in place already. But even now, “hope” seems defined in terms of things getting less awful.

After all this time of presuming the worst, and hoping and fighting for something less than the worst, we’re almost afraid to feel actual hope. Hearing live music in person? Seeing relatives that we’ve been cut off from for more than a year? Can these things even be real at this point? We all have a great fear of getting our hopes up. And yet it feels like we truly are turning a corner where it might be safe to have real hope after all.