Millennial Hope

As many an “apathetic millennial,” I tend to look at politics with cynicism and detachment. But upon entering the poll booth last Tuesday, I asked a question, “what value does politics have in my everyday life.”

As many an “apathetic millennial,” I tend to look at politics with cynicism and detachment. But upon entering the poll booth last Tuesday, I asked a question, “what value does politics have in my everyday life.” This willingness to even ask that question was a result of a conversion. Normally I would scoff at both candidates and take the “moral high ground,” but the presence of friends who provoke me to delve deeper into every circumstance in which I find myself opened me up to discovering something new.

After voting I went to Mass, carrying this question in my heart. As I prayed about this question, another one emerged: “why I am here?” I go to Mass because I want to see something beautiful in my day. I want to have a meaningful experience with the students I teach, with my family and friends. These are the things that matter to me because they are the most immediate circumstances in which the deepest desires of my heart emerge. And in the Mass, it is promised to me that these desires will be fulfilled.

The morning after the election, I was met with coworkers and friends who were wracked with fear and despair. Where did this anxiety come from? What happened overnight that changed the way they entered into their personal “life as usual?” I entered into my classes, my relationships with my students and loved ones, full of the awareness of that same desire and promise that I saw with the day before. Yes, I did share some of the anxiety that my friends had regarding the results of the election. But I was dominated, rather, by the loving gaze of the One who promised to fulfill my desire for meaning in the circumstances that I would meet that day.

How is it that that gaze remained the same? How is it that I could enter the bleak aftermath of this election full of the hope that what matters most to me will be given even today? Without the presence of friends who constantly provoke me to ask what truly matters to me... without those friends who become a concrete sign of the promise that what I desire most today will be fulfilled, I couldn’t have gone to work with that exuberant breath of freedom. I was reminded again of my need for a kind of hope that emerges not from mere optimism, but rather from certainty, from an encounter with a Person.

In front of those in my life who remain in despair, whose anxiety dominates their relationship with their daily affairs, I want to be a sign of hope...of the certainty that what matters most to us can be fulfilled in every circumstance...of the conviction that the finite nature of human power (ranging from my own to that of the president) is not an obstacle to my freedom. I want my relationships to be a place where dialogue is opened and where the question of “what matters most” can always be sparked, again and again.

I left Mass with a sense of wonder and gratitude. How could it be that what matters most to be will be fulfilled in every circumstance...that someone could promise me beauty even in the face of the most frustrating student, my most embarrassing flaws, and in an election season fraught with anger and violence? It became clear to me how exceptional such a promise could be-a true surprise that could only be borne of purely gratuitous gesture.