Thursday
Okay, so I may no longer be young, scrappy and hungry—I’m 69 going on 70—but as I received my second Moderna vaccination shot yesterday (!), I couldn’t help but think of Alexander Hamilton’s shot in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical:
I am not throwin’ away my shot
I am not throwin’ away my shot
Hey yo, I’m just like my country
I’m young, scrappy and hungry
And I’m not throwin’ away my shot
If Hamilton has been so popular, it’s in part because we long for its revolutionary optimism and wonder if we can ever get back to it. After all, we now live in a country where one party refuses to govern while convincing its voters that the last election was stolen. We watch as even common sense legislation can’t get passed except through an arcane measure called “reconciliation,” and then only some of the time. It’s difficult to believe that we’ll do anything other than continue to fumble along.
Oh for the days when we could dream of a glorious future:
I’m a diamond in the rough, a shiny piece of coal
Tryna reach my goal my power of speech, unimpeachable
Only nineteen but my mind is older
These New York City streets get colder, I shoulder
Every burden, every disadvantage
I have learned to manage, I don’t have a gun to brandish
I walk these streets famished
The plan is to fan this spark into a flame
But damn, it’s getting dark, so let me spell out my name
I am the A-L-E-X-A-N-D-E-R we are meant to beA colony that runs independently…
And:
[B]ut we’ll never be truly free
Until those in bondage have the same rights as you and me
You and I
Do or die
Wait ’til I sally in on a stallion
With the first black battalion
Have another shot…
Our (vaccine) shots, however, are at least giving us a fighting chance. The fact that we have vaccines at all–and therefore the possibility of a return to normal–means that we shouldn’t give up on hope altogether.
I approach the future more cautiously than I did when I was young and was participating in protest marches against segregation and the Vietnam War. I allowed myself to feel hope again when Barack Obama won the presidency, and it was just four years ago when I was still taking our democracy somewhat for granted. I feel far more chastened now.
I think of the ending of Great Expectations where two bruised souls, who have been to hell and back, come together possibly to start anew. Estelle can’t imagine a future but Pip, ever the optimist, can. As he famously puts it,
I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.
I’m Pip at the moment. America has been under assault—I even compared Donald Trump to Miss Havisham at one point—but I believe we can start making our way back to our founding ideals. We haven’t entirely used up our shot.