notes on hope by Mel N. '24, MEng '25

today it is warmer than it has been in a while, and i’m back in the lab doing bench work again after almost a year. i can taste spring on the tip of my tongue, and i can see it in the smiles that come more easily to the strangers i pass on my way home. it’s finally warm enough that i can bring fresh air into my room and let my cat hop onto the windowsill.

recently, most people i’ve talked to have been high-strung and uncertain. recently, it has been hard to see the good in the world. recently, it has been hard to remain hopeful.

i took three poetry classes with the same professor throughout my time at MIT — 21L.004⁠01 reading poetry freshman fall, 21L.487⁠02 modern poetry junior spring, and 21L.325⁠03 small wonders senior spring. on our last zoom session in freshman fall, he read us wild geese by mary oliver.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

i emailed him a few weeks ago in a particularly acute bout of despair, thinking of the wisdom he would share with us in class between raucous bursts of laughter.

These past few news cycles have made me think a lot about what it means to be and do good in spite of it all. Aside from holding Mary Oliver close to the heart, how might I navigate these troubled times when everything feels so fragile? Any nuggets of wisdom or poems (arguably the same thing) would be much appreciated.

a few days later, a new book of poems made it onto my bookshelf.

the foreword by ross gay was enough to dissolve me into tears. i did a report on ross gay’s poems once, in 21.487, and he actually came here to give a talk that i unfortunately missed because i was stuck in lab.

I have been spending a lot of time lately thinking about witness, about how witness itself is a kind of poetics, or poesis, which means making. […] Or maybe I have come to understand, to believe, how we witness makes our world. This is why attending to what we love, what we are astonished by, what flummoxes us with beauty, is such crucial work. Such rigorous work.

[…] Truth is, we are mostly too acquainted with the opposite, with the wreckage. It commands our attention, and for good reason. We have to survive it. But even if we need to understand the wreckage to survive it, it needn’t be the primary object of our study. The survival need be. […] The love need be. The care need be.

[…] How we need need be, too. Our radiant need. Our luminous and mycelial need. […] And that study, that practice, that witness, is called gratitude. Our gratitude need be.

as my time at MIT ticks closer and closer to an end (for real this time, for my MEng), i have come to appreciate more and more the little things about this place that i once took for granted, the things that i once was cynical and jaded about. it’s amazing how much the professors can care, and it’s amazing how much help and good will is available to you if you only ask. it’s amazing how much people look out for each other, and how much people care about each other, and that alone gives me the hope that i need.

i am constantly astonished by the goodness that persists in the world. in small moments, i see over and over again how people choose goodness, and it’s the consciousness of that choice that gets me all weepy and sentimental.

last week, i sent out a very small poll asking for some poems that spark hope. here is that list complete with snippets that ring true, along with some of my own favorites.

• Earthrise – Amanda Gorman [text]
  • […] we hold nothing dearer
    than this floating body we all call home.
  • We know it’s never too soon
    To choose hope.
• Wild Geese – Mary Oliver (of course)
  • Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
    Meanwhile the world goes on.
  • Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
    the world offers itself to your imagination,
    calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
    over and over announcing your place
    in the family of things.
• Prompt 18: beautiful things – Nikita Gill
  • […] everyone I love is doing beautiful things
    and trying to make life worth living,
• Solstice Re-pot – Shailja Patel
  • nothing is promised, sweet green girl
    I know the terror of unhoming
    dance this one with me
• Good Bones – Maggie Smith
  • […] This place could be beautiful,
    right? You could make this place beautiful.
• Feast (triptych) – Beth H. Piatote
  • But do we have better dreams? Have we seen better things?
  • Still, there was every morning an optimistic sky.
• Anthropocenic – Jake Skeets
  • any shadow still means light
• Dust of Snow – Robert Frost
  • And saved some part
    Of a day I had rued.
• Small Kindnesses – Danusha Laméris
  • Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.

and a tweet (from a poet, chen chen, whom i love) that i personally think counts as a poem: