As the Union General shouted to his troops when the battle began, “we’re in the shit now.”

That’s how I feel about the Presidential campaign. A golden opportunity to find hope. People write to me almost every day saying they want to hope, but can’t bring themselves to do it.

They fear betrayal or disappointment.

In the midst of all this churning and anger and argument.  I selfishly look for an opportunity to feel hopeful and to do good. To take a sip of hope.

Today I drove by the Mansion, the assisted care facility where I have volunteered for some years, and from which I have been banned for months because of the pandemic.

I put my mask on, get out of the car, and dropped some things off for one of the aides. There is basket maildrop on the porch.

As I move back to the car, Nancy, a resident who came to the Mansion with very few clothes to wear, comes towards me.

I hold up my hand and say “Nancy, don’t come any closer, we are not permitted to be close.”

She stopped a little hurt (she is a hugger)  and nodded.

“Jon,” she said, “I need some shorts. It’s so hot and I don’t have any shorts.”

“Why do you look so sad, Nancy?,” I asked.

“Because it’s so hot and I have no shorts, she said.”

I asked her what size she wore, and she said a size 4.

I said I would get her some shorts. She wouldn’t leave, so I had to just walk away.

As I was leaving, an aide came up to me and asked if she could ask a favor. She said her son’s birthday was coming up and she didn’t have the money to buy him a birthday present.

I was glad she asked.

She always said she didn’t need help, her pride was something I could almost touch, and I respected that. But she must be hurting now, to come up and ask me for help.

What does your son do, I asked?

“He loves to skateboard,” she said, “but I worry about him because he has no head or body protection, and he’s going to hurt himself. I’d like to buy head and knee protection.”

Okay, I said, I’ll do it.

I said goodbye and went home, pleased.

It was a long time before the residents or the aides trusted me enough to ask me for help. Some of them still look away when I walk past them, they are not sure what or who I am.

I went home and went online and bought a helmet and kneepads, wrist pads, and elbow pads and had them shipped to the aide’s home. They will get there before her son’s birthday.

I went to a consignment store and bought three pairs of size 4 shorts for Nancy, I will drop them off at the Mansion tomorrow.

I thought on the way home of the boy getting his birthday present, the hard-working Mansion aide feeling safer.

I thought of Nancy, who only one thing in the world right now, shorts to wear in the sometimes suffocating heat.

And I felt a great wave of hope. It is so easy to call up from the depths. This is my own holy spirit, alive inside of me. It is a wall around me made of crystal.

I can see in, but they can’t see me. That’s what it feels like.

What is on the news every day, and for the next few months, is important.

But it is not everything.

It is not all of my life. I keep it in its place, and when I talk to Nancy or the Mansion aide, my emotions spin around and re-arrange themselves, like some AI video game or wild dance on Tik-Tok.

The Mansion is a hard place to be and a hard place to work. There are no easy days. But it is a place of great hope and love.

The Presidential election brings up my loneliness because I can’t be a part of it because I can’t take it all in, I can’t join any team. I’ve always lived on the outside of things.

And the election is lonely because it is ugly and getting uglier. I won’t run away from it, but I won’t plunge into the pool either.

Nobody can do that for me, I have to it for myself.

There has to be something more important in my life, and there is, a lot of things.

I am lonely in my own country right now, lost in America. I feel like a pilgrim who wondered into a raging and violent struggle, too large to comprehend or stop, too insignificant to be noticed or hauled away.

But I can’t completely turn away from it either. I live here, and a lot of people risked their lives to get me here. I don’t want to miss it.

I know that it is when I am loneliest that the deepest and richest activities begin. Here, I discover action without motion or conflict, and beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits are infinite.

There is opportunity in difficulty, I live in both.

I wonder if we aren’t naive and unrealistic animals.

For hard work, we expect recognition. For honesty we expect justice.

But the reward for uncovering the truth is only the experience of being honest, nothing more. The reward for understanding is the peace of knowing.

No amount of thinking or aguing can eliminate the wonder and pain of living, or keep the rawness and cruelty of life – and the joy –  from running right through us.

This is sometimes devastating to people, but to me, the hapless optimist, it is reassuring.

Even the deepest pain will pass.

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The election is a  test of everyone’s endurance, a test of faith, and its cousin, hope.

It was the wizard of Oz who said look inside of yourself and find your holy spirit. That will make you strong.

I’ve learned that if I want to be strong, I have to learn to fight my battles alone. I don’t let fear define my past or decide my future. I don’t join any group or accept any label.

I think that’s what hope is. A sense of self. The ability to go inside and face the truth about yourself. And to clearly see who you are.

My hope doesn’t ride up and down with polls and bombast, pundits, and demagogues, accusations and replies,  it has its own heart and soul and is steady and true.

I’ve never found that hope comes from the outside – from a pundit or a politician or the news. I think hope has to come from the inside. People who look outside of themselves for it are doomed, in my experience, to live without it.

In my case, hope is all about what is inside of me, not outside.

Churchill said that the pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, and an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

I see nothing but difficulty and opportunity.