IMPACT ON MYSELF AND MY COMMUNITY- hope and tragic optimism

by Monique Sager

To my patients, I have failed you by sitting on my couch and watching Netflix. We were told we were courageous, heroes even, for staying home. But staying home is not enough. I didn’t organize any drives, any groups, for fear of failure and fear of being overwhelmed. I didn’t want to start to set something up, only to realize it already existed elsewhere and I had wasted people’s time.

As Brene Brown says, “Daring is not saying “I’m willing to risk failure.” Daring is saying, I know I will fail and I’m still all in.”

I thought I was protecting myself from failure by staying here, watching the news, sitting glued to my couch, but I see now that I need to risk failure. So what if I start an initiative that someone else has already started? So what if I can’t call enough people who are isolated- does it mean that I shouldn’t sign up to do that? I don’t think so. I think so many of us have been paralyzed by our fear, our sadness, and our sense of helplessness during this pandemic, and I would like to take a message out of Brene Brown’s book- know that you are going to fail, a lot, and do things anyways.