A lot of my life is spent on tomorrows.

For one, I am a mother. I am engaged in the daily awesome task of raising children whom I know (I hope?) will help remake this world in their own breathtaking image. For another, I am a development worker. I don’t really know how to define that in a way that those outside of that world can understand, except to say that I am career non-profit specialist. I have always been drawn in and rewarded by spaces that try to fix all that is broken and imagine better futures.

Tomorrow is a wonderful place. It is all potential and possibility. Of course that could mean worse than today – potential and possibility are neutral and are forced into motion by our collective action. So, being in league, professionally and personally, with collectives easing towards better feels righteous. It feels like fighting on the right side of things.

The thing about tomorrow is that it can lift you out of the now. That desire to propel forward and away from all the mess sometimes lands us in trouble. It’s why a newly postpartum mother, reeling from a difficult birth and the sheer shock of early motherhood is reminded that her baby is alive and healthy and here and that should lessen, if not nullify, her grief. It is why, here in South Africa, in our haste to find hope, we ignored the deep wounds of Apartheid that still fester, barely scabbed over. Looking ahead can dull our senses to the reason we are looking at all: the brokenness of where we are now.

When I am feeling especially discouraged, as a mother, as a development worker, I return to the work of words. What’s that line from the song? I’m a woman of my word, now haven’t you heard? My word’s the only thing I’ve ever needed. In this case, the words I turn to are not mine. They are Ursula Le Guin’s delivered in a commencement address in which she implores a graduating class – that expression of tomorrow and better and next – to sit in the pain of the now, become its student, for no other reason than because that is where they are. She tells them:

And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.

The desperation of the brokenness is what makes the continued work towards wholeness better. It’s what makes the now bearable and helps us draw joy from our drive to Tomorrow.