I am chopping carrots in a small warehouse in Dunkirk when Mary (not her real name), the middle-aged woman peeling potatoes next to me, asks me what my greatest passion is in life. Perhaps it’s her Gallic flair, or perhaps it’s the soothing rhythm of the chopping, that allows us to immediately transcend small talk in this way. “Writing,” I respond. (Mary’s is the English language—she is a retired teacher of that subject who now spends most of her time volunteering for various charities to support asylum seekers living in northern France.)
Mary is just one of the extraordinary people I have met in recent weeks in Calais and Dunkirk, where refugees from all over the world wait to cross the English Channel in small boats. I have met people who have travelled across Europe from Somalia, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and Eritrea with nothing but their own wits and resilience to rely on; people who are persisting in the face of unimaginable hardship. I have also met local French people like Mary—as well as volunteers from further afield—who devote hours every week to trying to improve conditions for people making this dangerous journey.
I have met 75-year-olds who, despite creaking joints, load heavy boxes of clothes into vans so they can deliver supplies to people seeking asylum. I have met young women who look armed male police officers directly in the face and bravely insist on their right to deliver humanitarian aid. I have met children whose joy at receiving sweets and playing with toy cars is utterly infectious. And while these people come from an endlessly diverse set of cultural and social backgrounds, they have one thing in common: a sense of hope.
I, personally, have always struggled with hope. My anxiety means that I feel much safer planning for the worst-case scenario than imagining the best. I absorbed the maxim “Don’t get your hopes up” so fully as a child that I often hear the phrase leaving my own mouth when I’m offering (unsolicited) advice to my friends. I find comfort in insisting to myself that, chances are, my best laid plans will fail, that I won’t get the dream job or I’ll be sick during a much-anticipated holiday.
This “realist” thinking extends beyond the personal to the political, too—as I watch the world get crueller and crueller, and fascism make its dangerous march across western democracies, I am inclined to wallow and rage. It is hard to believe that there is any way that things could get better—and I start to feel almost guilty for daring to enjoy my own life in the face of all the suffering. Hope feels not only futile but almost disrespectful, as though it doesn’t acknowledge the scale of the terror and misery that is out there.
But recently, witnessing how people hope in the face of extreme hardship, I have had to rethink my approach. It has been a privilege to see the reserves of hardiness and humanity that people find in circumstances that invite despair. Ultimately, getting on a boat and crossing the English Channel is an act of enormous faith in a better life. And serving meals to people waiting to cross the English Channel, as Mary does, is an act of faith in a better world.
And so perhaps I will replace the phrase “Don’t get your hopes up” with a Rebecca Solnit quote that I saw scribbled on the toilet door of a warehouse in Calais: “Joy doesn’t betray but sustains activism.” We cannot afford, in this dangerous moment, to surrender to fatalism or to beat ourselves up for finding happiness in the face of dark global events.
I am trying to learn how to comfort myself, not with the idea that I am prepared for the worst, but with the possibility, however small, that things could get better. They say it’s the hope that kills you—but without hope you are already dead.
