Jason Reynolds — On Hopelessness, the Virtue of Stamina, and Showing Grace to Ourselves

0:01I was longing for a deep dive on the muscular hope that Jason Reynolds embodies after I interviewed him at a Georgetown event last year. I got my chance at the 2025 Aspen Ideas Festival. This is going to be a short introduction because I want to get you quickly to soak up Jason's perspective that is so urgent for the world we've walked into now. on giving ourselves grace to be hopeless, the virtue of stamina, and the hope that stays strong in him from his life in relationship with the very young in our midst, our future incarnate, as well as his encounters with the occasional stranger in a bar.

0:47I'm Krista Tippett, and this is On Being.

0:54As our event began, our Aspen host introduced Jason as a best-selling author, champion of young people, and yes, a MacArthur genius. But also that what sets Jason apart is not only his extraordinary talent, but his wisdom. And that's where we set forth. it's true Jason I think of you as um kind of exhibit a that you don't have to be old to be wise well I'm not young either so there is actually wait you are I'm middle-aged he's 41 people that's middle-aged okay I don't know if y 'all know much about black folk that's middle-aged there you go okay we were just talking about the evolution of aging yeah i'll talk to you in 10 years and see how you feel that's true that's true that's true so so happy to be here so happy to be here with jason i first met jason by zoom in 2020 it was i don't know maybe june i think yeah the world was upside down inside out and we were speaking you know i was used to well we were in our homes yeah and it was a beautiful conversation which we called imagination and fortitude and i and i think we might summon those words again tonight.

2:24Sounds good. And then recently, like at the end of last year, we did an event at Georgetown called On Being Young in America. And it was the two of us and then somebody in her 20s, a Georgetown student. And I did consider that a cross-generational experience. And I started out by asking you, how is your heart? And you talked about being both encouraged and exhausted and that holding those two things required a lot of effort on your part. And even that has been exhausting. And I think, you know, it seems to me also that a feature of our time and just about everybody I know across just about every dividing line that we have feels exhausted and overwhelmed.

3:14And also that living in a state of overwhelm, which is also a fear response, is kind of an enemy of hope. So I also think that maybe everybody having wine with this conversation will help lubricate it. And you told me that since knowing that we were going to be here tonight, you were just really thinking about what are your feelings about hope. So tell me what you came up with. You know, whenever you're going to sit with Krista, it would behoove one to be a bit more intentional about the way that they use language. Right. I think. I think that hope is a word that is a valuable, valuable word that if we're not careful, becomes milquetoast.

4:04Becomes pedestrian, potentially the most potent word in the English language. Potentially the most overused word in the English language. And so I decided, knowing that I would be here and having this come out, let me really take a moment to think about this. Let me be intentional and really think about how I really feel about hope in this moment. So for me, at this particular juncture, if it is true, certain definitions say that hope is sort of a future desire. a desire for something in the future the future could be the in within the month within the minute right but the desire for a future thing i would uh then have to think about who i believe to be the purveyors of the future the arbiters of the future now all of you those of you who know who I am and what I've done know who I think the arbiters are, right?

5:12Earlier today, I sat on this very stage and talked about all these young people who were doing all this amazing work in Massachusetts. It's amazing. I was a part of the Aspen Challenge. So the first thing I would say is that, like, well, I do still feel it because I believe in the arbiters of the future, which, in my world are young people. But if I'm going to feel it based on my respect and expectation of young people, then that would mean that my hope would, that there would have to be grace baked in. Right? Because what happens is like, we're like, yeah, it's young people. And then young people act like young people.

5:52And then we say, it probably ain't young people. When the truth is, we have to extend a bit of grace in order for hope to actually take shape, right? If the arbiters and the purveyors are going to live to do their jobs, we, as far as I can see in this room, as adults, are going to have, like, grace is going to have to be baked in to the hope. The other thing I was thinking about, though, along with that, is thinking about your ideas around muscular hope. I also thought about, like, is it hope that's lacking or is it stamina? And so I started to think about hope as a muscular function, which then led me to my life as an athlete.

6:36And I started to think about what it was like to consider hope within the context of stamina. Because the truth of the matter is that it isn't that we run out of hope, it's that sometimes it's hard to hold on to a particular level of stamina in the midst of trying to remain hopeful in trying times like today, which led me down a different rabbit hole. And then that rabbit hole led me down the rabbit hole of like, I'm not so sure that we should be so afraid of the ideas around hopelessness. And just hear me out. Okay.

7:17if stamina and grace are two of the tenants of hope in my own life and if i were to think about my life as an athlete let's say i'm running track and let's say my stamina is what it is when the stamina runs out which in that context would mean when my breath runs out, when I run out of breath and energy, I then am allowed to stop and pause and catch my breath. And while doing so, I rely on my team and their stamina, which is probably better than mine given the time in which we started the race, to carry me on. Like my teammates then have a responsibility. to carry their teammate who was out of breath.

8:14But I do deserve and get a moment to be out of breath when I'm out of stamina. The idea of hopelessness as a perennial issue, I actually think is a bit disingenuous and unfair. But moments of hopelessness, I actually think are human. And I think we all should allow ourselves enough grace to take a moment to catch our breath, believing that the communities that we've built, which we should be building, will be there to sort of carry us with their hope until they're out of breath. And then it will be our turn to take the baton and to do the same thing. And so as I've been sussing it all, that's kind of where I am.

8:53I'm like, all right, I recognize that it's going to be these kids who are going to take us to the next level if we're doing our jobs. That it's going to require a muscular hope. But that which is muscular does not mean that it is always strong. It means it has strength, but it doesn't mean that it is always strong. And there will be moments where I will have to take a beat, and I'm going to be sad, and I'm going to feel hopeless, and I deserve the opportunity to feel that, knowing that there are people around me strategically put there, people who love me, who will carry me on until I can catch my breath and continue on with a hopeful life.

9:32That feels more human to me than the idea that I'm supposed to just be a beacon of hope all the time. I don't have it in me. I'd like to believe I do, but I'm a person, and life is hard. Beyond politics, life is hard. And I deserve that amount of grace, the grace I give these kids as they learn to live, as they learn to be human, as they learn to be whole, as they grow into adults, as they activate their egos, as they learn humility, all the things that we need them to be in order for us to continue on with the world in which we live in a better version of it, I also deserve the same amount of grace.

10:08I deserve to give myself the same amount of grace in the moments in which I need it. I love that. I mean, you're also talking about hope that is reality-based, right? That's not an ideal. And, you know, so recently I've been thinking about, in terms of companions to hope, what makes hope possible? And this idea of giving grace to others, to yourself, as something that makes hope possible is beautiful. I had a wild conversation last night with a man at the bar. Okay. And you know how that goes. He sat next to me and he said, what are you here to talk about? And I said, hope. And then he offered me, unsolicited.

10:59he offered me his opinion his name was Larry if Larry's in here I want to make sure everybody know because I ain't scared of you Larry he's not in here but Larry said as far as I'm concerned everybody's too concerned with victimhood and not enough gratitude in this country and in this moment I have the opportunity to extend grace and I also have the right to bow out of the conversation but I ain't never been a runner. It's just not my way. I say, well, Larry, I'd like to talk about it. Let's see. Okay, tell us. Let's see where we all are. Let's see. I don't know where I am. I ain't never been to Aspen before.

11:43Let's see what's going on. I'm not sure what this has to do with hope, Larry, but here we are. Larry said, yeah, man, everybody just complaining. They don't understand the gratitude they need to have for this country. I say, fair enough. I say, Larry, can I ask you a couple questions? I say, yeah. I say, Larry, let me ask you something. Let's say we're talking about children. Children growing up in a household, their parents are going through a nasty divorce and it's ugly. It's causing extraordinary trauma in that child's life. And let's say the child grows up. And when the child is now ready to talk about the trauma that has been inflicted by that child's parents, your response to the child is, you should be happy to have had a roof over your head.

12:26Never taking accountability or trying to atone for the trauma in which that child has experienced. Do you think the child has a right to then, like, can we hold both of those things simultaneously? It's not that the child isn't grateful. It's that the child is weighed down by a particular trauma that you refuse to atone for. Is that okay? What do you think about that? That makes sense. Okay. Also, any child, America is the land of the free, a free place. Freedom looks different depending upon who you are, where you are, how you are, how much money you have. We all know this. We can pretend like we don't, but we do.

13:00Freedom varies based on your demographic and your experiences in this particular country, the way in which you were born. A crapshoot. We all know this is to be true, and if you don't, I hate to be the person to break it to you. Right? And if that is true, for those of us who have more freedom, if you have a child who you've given freedom to the likelihood of that child growing up and being grateful is slim it's different because the child feels entitled in a different way because freedom is all the child is known do you agree with that larry said i agree with that too right now there was more that i could have done but i decided to pull the conversation there because in my mind i'm thinking to myself well larry's not a bad guy yeah larry's just never been there's never been any pushback.

13:46There's never been any discourse. And so Larry gets to say anything, and everybody around Larry says, I agree. But if I could extend a little bit of grace to engage in a human interaction without judgment, I was curious to hear what he, I'm going to go back to my room regardless, Larry. You and me may never speak. I'm never going to see you again. But I'm curious what happens if I I extend more grace than, like, I don't owe Larry nothing. But if I extend a little grace based on the fact that you and I both are at this bar, we are both human beings, and we happen to also be Americans, I wonder what comes of this conversation.

14:23And the truth is Larry could have got up and walked away and been like, that kid knows nothing. Or he could have got up and walked away, and when he got around his friends, he could have been like, you know, it's complicated. there's a bigger conversation that we can have around around hope around victimhood which is a very complicated word to use by the way yeah and around and around gratitude right and i think this is what grace has the opportunity to do and the truth is me and larry's conversation did leave me hopeful why because it let me know that that america is still a place though it's so uncomfortable for so many of us and for good reason by the way where we can disagree without harm i don't think there's anything wrong with this disagreement unless the disagreement has to do with my right to live.

15:21You don't have to believe in the things that I believe in. We can believe in different gods, different ways of life, different parenting and family dynamics. We can believe in all the things except for my right to liberty. Once we cross that line, then this is a different conversation. But Larry didn't do that. That's not what Larry was doing. Larry just simply said, look, here's the way I've been thinking about this. There seems to be a lot of people crying and not a lot of people praising how important it is and how amazing it is to live in this country. That's all he said to me. Larry didn't disrespect me, right?

15:56And it doesn't mean that Larry didn't trigger things in me, but Larry didn't disrespect me. That's the truth. And I want to be honest about that, despite my natural inclination to find fault in that man. I don't. The truth of the matter is he engaged in the discourse and he didn't run from it, and neither did I and we got to sit there over a bowl of french fries and a couple glasses of wine and have a mature responsible respectful conversation and we both walked away from it feeling okay and also hearing the other person that's okay like there's no there's nothing wrong with that that gives me that that gives me hope like hope isn't a kumbaya for me right it doesn't mean that someday we all going to feel the same about the same things who would want to live in that world.

16:40I don't want to live in America if all of us feel the same way about everything. Like the point is that we're all different and that we should have differences and that's what makes it interesting to be a human being, right? So I don't think hope needs to be a melding of everything. But me and Larry having a discourse and then could walk away from that discourse without either of us saying that that person is hateful, is hopeful for me. And some might say the bar is then set low but to me that is a very high bar in the country as it stands today well it is and that story right now in this time in our life together feels really hopeful and then i kind of stop myself because i actually think that kind of thing may be happening all the time in bars and on park benches it's not the story that comes at us that makes us yeah hopeless oh yeah you would think you would almost think that that's not possible but that is the see but this is so at some point we're gonna have to figure out who the real culprit is like I

17:48sometimes you gotta turn your TV off young people got this terminology right touch grass which means go outside even though they don't go outside so it's not really young people it's really my generation like go outside right I think um my experiences and like my experience is only my experiences right everywhere I go I'm invited right so to be clear this is coming from a privileged experience that being said the news would have you I put it in a different pocket for the four black people in the room the internet would have us believe that we hate each other gender wars all of us see it right diaspora wars right for the four of us in here who know what i'm talking about right right there's all this weird in real life it's not actually a thing on the internet though it's like man yeah we are in trouble right and i i wonder sometimes the damage that media does we need journalists we need free press we need all those things i think we always have to be a little bit concerned if your news got commercial somebody's paying for it on either side biases are real if your news has commercials someone is paying for the news right therefore there are biases on each side which should be acknowledged i think we're all intelligent and this is an ideas conference We're all intelligent enough to sort of see that and to know how that functions.

19:19And I think what happens is that they perpetuate a particular kind of fear-mongering that keeps us at odds and is used for all sorts of political ploy. I mean, look, you know, this is a tricky, tricky thing. But on my everyday life, I've been in some real, I mean, I go to NASCAR every other week. I travel for NASCAR. Imagine it. I show up, you know, as myself. And I have really interesting conversations with people. And there are very few times where I've ever felt disrespected. Now, there have been tough conversations. I think we also have to recalibrate what is uncomfortable and what is unsafe.

20:05I feel uncomfortable sometimes. I mean, this is a really strange conversation, and you and I are never going to see eye to eye. right that's a really interesting question to ask yourself yeah am i uncomfortable or do i feel unsafe if you are a woman this is a different conversation to be fair right but as me for me in my life i'm i don't ever feel unsafe i do there are moments of discomfort but i rarely feel unsafe and i have really complicated conversations with strangers yeah that usually end in it being like well you know i could actually that's interesting or i'll think about that and me being like i'm definitely probably not going to think about that but i feel you you have a right to feel it you have a right to feel that way well i'm probably not gonna i'm not with you you know what i mean and that's really what it is and so i think and so i think when i look at the news and we're at like really at odds with each other i'll take prime example and i'll kick it back to you a prime example the first time trump was elected the next day i had to fly to a small town called only Illinois.

21:05Now, in the moment, I'm thinking to myself, this is a bad idea. I should cancel the trip. My mother is freaking out. My mother is, at the time, a 73-year-old woman from South Carolina, rural South Carolina. She had a very different upbringing. She has taken every lick one could take as it pertains to race in America. She's like, Jason, this is a bad idea. I don't like it. I'm concerned. I don't want you to go. And I'm like, well, they invited me. And she's like, That was before sort of the mobilization of what seems to be a radical right, right? But I go. I picked it from the airport from a man who was the wealthiest man in the town.

21:44He owned a used car dealership. We drive two hours from O 'Hare, from Chicago, into a very small town with one stoplight, one school, one church, and a Walmart, which is where everybody worked. and he on the way he looks at me and he says i know what you're thinking because i'm probably look visibly shaken because i know what you're thinking and i say what you think i'm thinking he said you think we are racist and homophobes and islamophobes and xenophobes and sexist and misogynists and i was like yeah i don't know how you did that but you hit it on the head And then he said, he said, some of that is true.

22:28Some of us are. Where we're going to go, some of us are. He said, but a lot of us in this little teeny town with a lopsided budget of Illinois, where Chicago gets all the budget and we get the crumbs. We don't even have paved roads where we're all growing our food. And if the crops don't grow, then we got to hope the insurance adjusters come out. And if they don't, then we starve for the season. We're talking about one school, one church, and everybody got to try to get a job at the Walmart. And if they can't get a job at the Walmart, then they do not have a job. We're going there. That's where I'm going to take you.

23:04And he came here. And he told us he would feed us. Whether it's true or not, our desperation called for us to make a decision that for some of us was even against our ethic. Now, I come from an all-black working-class neighborhood. There are people in my family, friends of mine, who have done terrible things, things against their ethics to feed their families. People who have robbed people, held up liquor stores, and done all kinds of other things to keep a roof over their children's heads and keep their babies clothed. So when he's telling me the story, I'm thinking to myself, but I can't relate.

23:43I do know what that is. I do. I do. from a human level, right? If I could just, if I could complicate my own argument, which is everybody's biggest fear, by the way, especially those of us coastal folk. If I could just complicate my own argument a little bit and listen to what he has to say, I don't have to agree, nor do I have to relinquish him or extinguish the necessity for his accountability. You still got to be held accountable for the decisions that you made, but I can hear you and I actually can kind of see how that could happen for the lot of you who are down bad. Then I got to the town, and we pull up to a pizzeria, the only place to eat in town.

24:29He said, this is the only restaurant we got, so we're going to have to eat pizza. Someone who's lactose intolerant, this is complicated. So I go in, and I'm like, brother, you're going to have to get me, can they make me something without cheese on it? And I can eat a veggie with just no cheese. He's like, that's very strange, because this is Illinois. and I'm like, please, just do me a favor. The Midwest is like, what do you mean? And when I get in there, there's a table full of kids having a birthday party. They all got on fatigue, camouflage, sticks and leaves. Now for the black people in the room, we know, this is a secret, I shouldn't be telling these secrets, but sticks and leaves camouflage is for us a symbol of racism.

25:11And for those of you who don't know what sticks and leaves camouflage is, is the camouflage of sticks and leaves, right? It has sticks and leaves on the, you know what I'm talking about, anybody? Okay, so for us, because of whatever we are, like, sticks and leaves, that's anything, right? So I walk in, everybody got on sticks and leaves, and I'm like, oh, man, this is wild. The little kid looks over at me and says, yo, what you doing in here? And I can feel my back tighten up, and I'm like, oh, man, I'm just trying to eat this non-cheese pizza and get out of town. and I'm like what you mean I'm here for you know I'm just trying to get at some pizza and he's like I'm just saying like yo why would Jason Reynolds be in our small town having pizza like we we have to grace grace we have to challenge our own prejudices even when we have a right to be prejudiced even when we have a right to try to figure out ways to protect ourselves because everything in us has said that this is a dangerous situation we still owe it to ourselves, by the way, to challenge our own prejudices, to extend a little bit of grace.

26:15Them babies ain't do nothing to me. They don't deserve my bias. They don't deserve my prejudice in the same way that my babies don't deserve yours. Right? And it taught me more than I could have ever imagined. So Larry gets off because of that. So, you know, what I'm thinking as I'm listening to this is I suspect and believe I mean you are extraordinarily wise and extraordinarily curious but I think that an effect of this time of rupture is that more of this kind of curiosity of wondering of asking questions of like these mundane ordinary encounters that wouldn't have happened that are like you know transformative I think there's more of that and you know so just to like take this to a whole different level you know if you think about fear as this place so many of us are living out of on every side fear is the most powerful thing in a human body except perhaps love yes and fear focuses us fiercely on looking for danger looking for what's bad looking for who's the enemy and so you know to kind of circle it back to hope and this is all about hope and bringing it down to earth it actually is a muscle it actually takes effort to look for grace to look for this kind of meeting and learning as also the story of our time yes that i really believe is happening all over the place and actually like in this room everybody who has just heard this story has been a little bit transformed i wonder if so like the way we talk about it you even said this in your intro that usually if there is fear that that it's the antithesis of love right and i don't know i don't know i want to wrestle with this a bit because i don't know i think that human beings are full of complex emotions and i think in all the other parts of our lives that don't have to deal with human beings fear and love get to coexist yeah so i said fear is an inverse of hope an inverse of hope yes yes yes but i but i think Fear shuts us down for all kinds of things.

28:55Fear definitely shuts us down. But not always. Because I also think a lot of us carry it. I mean, any time I get on an airplane, it's with me. And I'm on it. And I'm hoping. Yeah, right. Right? Like both of those things are coexisting. See, that may be the wishful thinking kind of fear of hope. I disagree because, see, I would agree if I'd never spoken to a pilot. And when you speak to a pilot and they explain to you what turbulence is, the information doesn't do away with the fear, but it does solidify the hope. Uh-huh. Right? So it's like, all right, I know that like for me, as a person who has anxiety clinically, that if I'm going to fly, I have to sit in the window.

29:53The reason why, because a pilot told me one time, when you feel the bumps, look out the window, you realize we're not falling from the sky. Right? Doesn't mean you're not afraid. It just means you understand enough to manage the fear up against the hope that we land. Now imagine with human beings. Now with Larry or with this man and only, it isn't that I wasn't afraid. It's that I was open enough to learn and to get information about who he was and where he was from. It didn't do away with the fear because when the little boy said, what you doing here? I was definitely afraid. And he was 12, right?

30:27I was definitely afraid, but I was able to manage that fear with the hope that I'd gained from information. And so my fear these days is that there aren't enough of us trying to find information. So what happens, it's so much easier to just assume. It's so much easier for groupthink to happen and be like, who bad? They bad? They bad. Right? Like, let me know who's bad so I could be on the right side. Right? Or it's easier to say the right thing on a social platform so that I get a reinforcement through likes and affirmations and retweets, whether or not it's actually real, right? And like the way life works or not, it gives me enough of a dopamine hit to help me believe that my biases are worth standing on.

31:12And therefore I get to lock them down and dig my heels in and my fear gets to grow and my hope gets to lessen as long as the argument sort of stays on the side in which I need the argument to stay on for that. So the truth of the matter is we love to be afraid. It makes us feel so much more comfortable because as long as we're afraid, then if anything were to happen so I could blame it on the fear I had instead of extending myself to say, let me put myself in an uncomfortable situation to see if you are actually any different from me, human being. Because the truth of the matter is you're probably not on average.

31:41Now, those of us who are black and women and trans and gay should be concerned. Only because the country has shown us that perhaps your life isn't valued. But on a day-to-day basis with the people in which we interact with, the truth of the matter is most of them are trying to get to work just like you. and I think that but knowing more arms us differently where we maybe perhaps can carry both things I don't know if it extinguishes the fear because I don't know if it's smart to to extinguish the fear yeah well we know it keeps us safe it keeps us safe we never we yeah we I don't think we ever extinguish it I don't think we should partly what we're talking about is just getting conscious getting aware exactly awareness of what's of all of that what do you think is keeping us from it getting conscious getting aware yeah it's it's it's well partly that this i think that this fear response first of all is very reasonable there are a lot of really good reasons to be fearful right now there are lots of reasons to be fearful right so so so to honor that and then our body's default is to go there and it goes there without our permission It goes there without asking us if that's how we want to feel.

32:51It sets off a cascade of responses inside our bodies. And I think we've all been living for the last five years with the effects of stress unfolding in our bodies. So it just takes effort, right? It's a practice to do this ordinary thing of getting curious. Yeah, I agree. You know, it's interesting. I've been doing all this work around, I've been studying like neurology. I've been trying to figure out, like, I'm just curious about how the brain is functioning. Emotional trauma is processed through the brain in 90 seconds.