Misery is not wisdom

I might be botching a Hank Green quote with the title of this post but I’ve noticed how it’s increasingly difficult to stay buoyant, to keep light on my toes, to feel optimistic about the future. In Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millenium, lightness is the first quality he notes for aspiring writers but I’ve always taken it one step further: I believe that lightness is an essential quality to strive for outside of books and e-essays, too. It requires constantly fighting your own brain-goo, the overwhelming complacency and laziness and shortsightedness of so many, and that eternal memento-mori-feeling that all things eventually turn to muck. Lightness is heroic! It is courageous! Not to turn a blind eye to terrible things or ignoring them completely, of course, but rather in the face of so much misery to come out hopeful on the other side of it. So: here are some things that have kept me light. The new (and final) XOXO website is fantastic. I loved XO. I went three times and I…