Back when this site was new, I wrote a post called "On Trying," an attempt at capturing my belief that trying is everything. Back then, we were a few years past the awful height of the pandemic, the election that ushered in Trump 2 was still in the future, and things hadn't fallen apart as completely as they have now. While I felt fairly battered from the previous few years, saying that I was trying felt like an optimistic act.

Now, of course, things are worse and, as they stack up against us—most recently the Supreme Court's gutting of the voting rights act and the scramble of neo-Confederate states to redraw their congressional districts—there's a real sense of despair among many.

But here's the thing: Trying is still all we have.

It's not even optimistic to say we have to try, it's just necessary. To give up, to stop trying, is to accept that things can't change. As Audrey Lord put it: "despair is a tool of our enemies." Despair is a gift to those that want you to believe that what we've got is all we'll get and there's no way to make things better.

Things can always get better, but it doesn't happen via inertia. It happens because a lot of people tried. Pretty much every big change—every inch made toward progress—has been done because people dreamed it was possible and tried to make it happen. They didn't always succeed. They always tried.

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