I’ve been thinking about hope, lately. My friend Christian Coon shared a quote from Mariame Kaba that begin, “Hope is a discipline…” and it’s been in my head ever since.
It can be hard work, practicing hope. Hard and tedious and boring, like a gym routine. We lift small amounts daily, to be able to lift larger amounts in the future.
We come into this present moment from separate pasts. We arrive as survivors; as perpetrators of injustice; as victims of violence; as wielders of it. As bystanders and witnesses, more often than not. Our roads are long and rocky and all different.
But we have only one destination. There is only one future, and we are going there together. We get to choose: will we continue to repeat the mistakes of history, or will we change our ways and build a better Cleveland, for everyone?
We walk forward, guessing at the next step, our hands outstretched to balance on this tightrope. We carry certainty in one hand, and wonder in the other, and hope is the thing that keeps us moving forward.
For me, on this day where we both grieve our losses and count our blessings, I am looking both backward and forward. We must know and name the wounds of the past. But we cannot know or name the blessings of the future: we must simply be awake, ready to experience them.
I am grateful for you, Readers of Cleveland, and for the opportunity to meet you, to talk books, and to build a better future for our city. Today will be a day of rest and renewal, of grief and gratitude. But tomorrow: tomorrow we will be awake, early. We will be ready to meet you at the bookstore; ready to work toward that better future.
I cannot wait to see you.
—Bookseller Quinn
