“How do we live in this terrible world?” A reader asked me. This is the only answer I have Jonathan Friedland

IIt’s a season full of traditions, and as long-time readers know, it has been my habit to try, in my last column before Christmas, to find some reasons to feel hopeful. I was planning to do it anyway, but my resolve was strengthened after a conversation with a reader who contacted the Guardian and Observer’s charity TV show last weekend. Tammy, 75, made the donation, but she also had a simple, if unfathomable, question: “How do we live in this terrible world?”

She proceeded to list some of the things that prompted her to blatantly ask the question. She spoke about the ongoing bloodshed in Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza. I sighed at the imminent return of Donald Trump. This week brought two more items to add to her list.

We have learned more about the depths of evil committed by the ousted Assad regime, while discovering what appears to be… Mass grave site The city of Qutayfa is characterized by long and deep trenches. It is said that twice a week from 2012 until 2018, four trucks came, each carrying more than 150 bodies, identifiable only by numbers etched on their chests or foreheads. This means that the remains of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, who were killed by their ruler, are present in the land of Qutayfa. And this is just one site. There are others. All this after more details emerged about and in Saydnaya Prison Torture rooms and dungeonsThey were machines designed to cut wood and metal Spread against flesh and bone.

Closer to home, the three people who caused the death of 10-year-old Sarah Sharif, one of whom was her father, were sentenced this week. The details of her torment were so horrific, they would haunt anyone who heard them. The judge who sentenced the guilty spoke of “almost unimaginable” cruelty.

When you know these things, and when events like this keep happening, it’s hard not to ask, as Tammy did: “How are we going to survive?” Or to make the question more difficult: How can we live and remain optimistic, even optimistic, about the future? Here, then, offered in the spirit of the season, are some preliminary suggestions.

One option is to turn off. I don’t mean cutting off from the world completely, although that can have its place sometimes, but rather managing your dismal diet. Professional journalists may need to keep up with all the breaking developments and updates, but there’s no reason for everyone to do so. However, I see a lot of people heading towards the abyss, or watching mainstream news channels on repeat. There are a lot of good arguments for reducing your social media consumption, but overexposure to bad news is definitely one of them.

However, I admit that this means skirting the problem rather than confronting it. Even if you reduce the amount of news you receive, and only check it once a day, there are times when even a glance at the headlines can leave you feeling hopeless. So how to manage that?

First comes the realization that finding light in the darkness does not just happen; You have to work on it. Think of it as an alternative to Optimism by will: Deliberate optimism. It means making a deliberate effort to combat the pessimism of the mind, which has a bad habit of arriving first.

Recall the reaction to the election results in July. There was an immediate move to analyze the problems stored in Labour’s victory: it was a loveless landslide, there was little enthusiasm, the vote share was small, and support was widespread but superficial. Not to mention the enormous scale of the task facing the new government. All of this was, and still is, true.

But it moved very quickly beyond what had just happened: the British expelled the corrupt, useless Conservative Party, and gave Labour, which had often been rejected in opinion polls, an overwhelming majority. This was great news, but it required an active and conscious decision to savor it. We focused our attention on the cloud before taking a closer look at the bright side. Of course, we can all see the flaws in this new government – ​​one of which is its lack of optimism – but perhaps we should take a moment to remember what it replaced, and what an alternative might look like.

Or, to take a radically different example, the impulse was strong, upon hearing of the fall of Bashar al-Assad, to immediately worry about what would happen next, specifically the possibility that an offshoot of al-Qaeda would turn Syria into another oppressive Islamic theocracy. . But willful optimism will lead you, first, to marvel at the images of Syrians finally freeing their loved ones from Assad’s torture chambers, and then to allow that Syria may be breaking with its past, and the model set by most of its neighbors. To build a stable and relatively free society. We don’t have to pretend that this is likely, but for at least a moment we can allow for possibility—and hope.

As part of this effort toward optimism, we can draw strength from those who dare to swim against even the bleakest waves. I think of the staff of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, for example, who, in the face of intense opposition, including a planned boycott by the country’s far-right government, constantly urge their fellow citizens to… To face reality What their leaders and army are doing in Gaza. This kind of work wins few friends. However, if Israelis and Palestinians are to find a way out of the current darkness, this is the courage that is required. Having this courage already, here and now, is a reason for hope.

Or I think of my friend and Guardian colleague, Merope Mills, who took the greatest loss anyone can face – the death of a child – and somehow turned that pain into a life-saving gift for others. Her brilliant and relentless campaigning for the Martha Rule, which gives families the right to request an urgent review of a loved one’s hospital treatment, has already had a “transformational impact”, according to the national medical director for NHS England.

And sometimes it’s helpful to just celebrate what’s good. Last weekend, in what has become another seasonal tradition, I got together with friends to watch the Strictly Come Dancing final. Trust me, you didn’t have to be a fan of sequins or samba to be in awe of what happened there. Chris McCausland, a blind comedian, has surprised even himself by learning and mastering a series of complex routines. It was inspiring, of course, but it was also heartening to know, several weeks ago, that the electorate was always going to make him the winner.

I’m not sure any of this answers Tammy’s question. How do we live in this terrible world? Maybe by accepting that it’s the only one we have and that it’s not always so terrible – and that sometimes, even often, it can be rather beautiful.

• Jonathan Freedland is a columnist for The Guardian

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