Manicures, Monty Python, joy: Tools of the resistance

We desperately need laughter again. And who does absurdity better than the Ministry of Silly Walks?

- ANNE LAMOTT GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

HandMade Films / Shutterstock TO SURVIVE 2025, we need the wisdom of 1979's "Life of Brian," the Monty Python film that featured George Harrison. Or whatever makes you laugh, because hope comes in many forms.

AS THE PSYCHIATRIST Dr. Melfi says to Tony in the pilot episode of “The Sopranos,” “Hope comes in many forms.” I was reminded of this the other day when I found my finger glued to the hand of another woman.

I had set out that morning to celebrate all the indications that the political plates of the Earth had shifted - millions of people at the No Kings marches, all the court cases that the White House keeps losing and Trump's Epstein nightmare.

I wanted to immerse myself in the headway. Something's happening here. Those in charge want us to give up until the next election, but of course we are not going to, because we have children and nieces and nephews. The dark forces must be childless. They are not concerned about squeezing the life out of the Constitution, the rising oceans and the reemergence of diseases long eradicated, because they are so bottomlessly stupid and greedy. And they are unaware of what happens when the autocracy overreaches. Every time. Think pitchforks. Ticktock. This gives me a little hope.

Hope comes in many forms: When I hear the songs of the civil rights movement at our marches, a soft gong sounds. The poet Jack Gilbert wrote, “We must admit that there will be music despite everything.” Ever since I heard the author Caroline Myss say that when darkness and evil go nuclear, love and hope must go nuclear too, I started getting occasional manicures with glittery polish, to remind me.