Don’t Stop Believin’

Eons ago, technologically speaking, when the blogosphere emerged as a newfangled form of communication, I wrote a blog about the dictionary. Proud nerd here! The premise of my long defunct project was to randomly open a page in my giant dictionary and point at a definition, then write about that word and its relation to my life. And no matter what, I never changed the word, even when it was tough to write about. My project lasted several years and there were long periods where I posted every single day. My original blog was an incredible creative endeavor for me. Not only was I able to hone my writing skills, but I also learned a whole bunch of really awesome new words and etymologies. Over the more than 600 posts (!) I wrote, there was one word that has always reverberated with me — meliorism.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, meliorism is “the belief that the world can be made better by human effort.” When I first stumbled upon this word I was gobsmacked; where had this been my entire life? There is debate about the word’s origins: the British author George Eliot claimed she coined it in 1877, although scholars have found earlier usages. There is also a hypothesis that the word itself stems from ameliorate, “to make something better”. Simply learning there was a word that defined my core philosophy was a great comfort to me. My religion has always been kindness and while I was raised in a Lutheran church, kindness was the lesson I absorbed from every weekly sermon. I am damn proud to call myself a meliorist, even in times like these where it is really hard to believe in people. And hard to accept just how many people do not believe in meliorism Or how many people have extremely biased and hateful ideas of how to better the world. To quote Dr. John, “it is aggrevationary”!

As a woman, and a meliorist, the results of the November election really walloped me. For days I walked around vacillating between anger and grief and fear. I was not my perky self, nor were most of my friends. During those dim moments I grasped for all manner of comfort — and my quilts were a big source of relief. I also pulled out my comfort music and songs too, continually redirecting my mind away from the song “Oppression” by Ben Harper toward “It’s Gonna Be Okay” by Anders Osborne. I utilized my journal and meditations. I cut way back on my media intake and sought distractions in things that would not upset me. I sought beauty in both the ordinary and the extraordinary. At the same time, I also let myself experience the emotions because what happened is real bad folks and to just push past it isn’t going to help in the long run. 

I’m incredibly inspired by the artists and makers who are channeling their energy into ways that will further their creativity and deepen their practices during this dark time. And I admire this greatly and am going to admit that I am not there yet. It is still too raw for me. What I want to do is spread more comfort through my creations, mend and care for my existing belongings, find deep joy in the everyday and only spend money with small businesses and makers. My mind is churning with oodles of ideas using the beautiful fabrics I already own. I have plans that involve hope, resilience and reuse yet only time will tell what actually gets accomplished. For now all we can do is just keep on keeping on.

Apologies for getting the world’s greatest ear worm in your head, but as Journey once sang and every karaoke bar echoes dozens of times each night, “don’t stop believing”. If you too believe in meliorism, all we can do is keep trying to make the world a better place one moment at a time. One smile at a time to our grocery cashiers, one thank you at a time to all of the people who help us, one dollar at a time to small businesses. We can turn off the news, turn on the music, read the cozy books and contribute goodness in our own individual ways.