Transcript

Hello,

How are you?

During the pandemic I started to think about how often people truly ask others how they are. You know, like they really mean it. 

Do you know how it feels when someone who loves you asks you how you are? You feel relieved, don’t you? A relief that you are not alone. That, for a second, there’s a tender, honest moment where your joy or pain has a soft place to land, held by someone’s attention. That’s what's we all crave, to some degree, right? To matter to the people that we love.

And there’s a fear, right? A fear that it will all be taken away.

I feel the same way. I have been feeling afraid of what the future holds. Of this dying planet that we’ve inherited and the fascism that’s taken over. It’s cruel and it feels chilling to witness the atrocities on this planet. To sit with what we are capable of doing to one another is an untenable grief that I have been holding for almost my entire life.

When the pandemic first started, living in New York as the sirens blasted every hour of the day, you knew there were just bodies collapsing within those screaming vehicles because that’s what happened when the virus took hold, it ravaged, it was uncompromising. It grew like a flame, leaping from one body to another. It’s a thing we still have not fully comprehended, but what we do know is that a week turned into months which turned into over a year. And it still makes me deeply sad to think of the loneliness of that time.

Of all that was lost to arrive here.

It was scary, wasn’t it?

It’s okay to feel confused, to feel fear, to feel heartbroken and weary. I know these times are challenging, but as my father reminds me, they are also remarkable times, too. 

As we live to see the vast shifts in ecology and society, it’s clear that we are on the precipice of a major shift. It’s important to hold that feeling close to our hearts, because that feeling is one of hope, and it can’t be forgotten, or dismissed.

Hope has always been necessary, but I do wonder if we’ve ever really had it. Doesn’t it feel like we’ve never truly had hope in our grasp, that it’s always been taken from us? And yet, within us, within me, there’s a flame, like a temple, flames that have stayed lit for thousands of years—that’s what ignites anticipation for the new days, but it must be nurtured, and protected. As abolitionist Mariame Kaba tells us, “Hope is a discipline,” and in order to believe in the brighter future, in a world of peace, we must do the work. The everyday work of not forgetting that we are responsible for each other.

I believe that we would all be better to each other if we remembered ourselves amidst all of this. Some of us never had ourselves. For much of my childhood, because of abuse, I lost myself to the sadness of familial violence. That loss has marked my entire life.

It took me a long time to understand that I had agency. That meant I had to start paying attention to myself. I had to learn how to love myself, doing that helped me regain the hope that I had lost in my early life when I was taught to believe that nobody could love me, that I was a burden. 

Your heart deserves your attention first. Never underestimate that. I believe that if we spent more time being tender with ourselves, if we moved towards a society of trust, we could heal our broken relationships with each other, and therefore with this Earth. Imagine a society that could hold the needs of all. That’s possible, we’re the only ones that are standing in our way.

During this pandemic I had weekly calls with my father. It’s a recent discovery that we are similar, and each week that would be reflected in our conversations. Genders and generations apart, we both felt the quiet shrill lurch across the globe, as things continued (and continue) toward dark paths, and yet we both also have the same sense of optimism for our species' evolution.

I shared with my father that as Earth’s astrology determines, she is going through a major transition. As the planets move from Capricorn—which rules Saturn, the old-world order, we move into Aquarius, and thus into innovation and change. I fear my father’s death. He is an academic and writer, me a writer and scholar—both mirrors of each other. Both of us have lived alone during the pandemic, in deep isolation, and both of us spent our times cloistered in books, thinking about evolution and how to get there.

Hope—it is a discipline we must not forget. We must hold on to each other, and invest in the happiness and fortitude of our neighbours, of all types of species. We must show the Earth our respect for her. And as we nurture ourselves back to health, we must also nurture her back to her bountiful being.

Don’t we want more for our species? Are we committed to the next stage of our evolution? I am, won’t you join me?

“Hope has always been necessary, but I do wonder if we’ve ever really had it.”

Set against the backdrop of COVID-19 in New York, and rooted in complicated family histories, Róisín’s address advocates for hope in spite of its many obstacles. In a heartfelt letter to the listener she shares resilience and capacity for hope, amid loss and cataclysm.

Fariha Róisín is a multidisciplinary artist born in Ontario, Canada. She was raised in Sydney, Australia, and is based in Brooklyn, New York. 

Róisín’s work exists at the intersections of her identity as a queer, Muslim, South Asian woman interested in spirituality, race and pop culture. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, and Allure. She has also pioneered a refreshing and renewed conversation about wellness, contemporary Islam and queer identities. 

She is the author of the poetry collection How To Cure A Ghost (2019) and the novel Like A Bird (2020). Her upcoming work is a book of non-fiction entitled, Who Is Wellness For?, to be released in spring 2022.

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