When the Heart Can Only Hold One Thing
A special edition on grief, hope, and staying connected when the world feels broken.
👋 Last week, I sent you a special edition called “A Messenger from the Silence”—a story about hope, connection, and what I witnessed on the streets of Tehran. I wrote it from a plane, carrying messages from people trapped in a blackout, still hopeful that this time might be different.
Today, I’m sitting in Berlin trying to find words for what happened after I left. The internet blackout didn’t end. What followed was a massacre. Thousands killed. Families torn apart. A nation grieving in darkness while the world looked away.
I sat down trying to write about growth, about becoming a better version of ourselves, about the usual pursuits of self-improvement. But none of it sat right with my heart. The air here is clean, yet I feel like I can smell the smoke, the ashes, the blood shed over these past three weeks.
And I thought: what can I offer right now? Not just to Iranians carrying this weight, but to anyone who has felt paralyzed by grief. Anyone who has struggled to continue life as normal when the world feels broken. Because tragedies visit all of us eventually. And even if you haven’t faced one yet, you will. We all will.
So I went back through everything I’ve read on sorrow, grief, hope, and healing. Not to make the pain easier to bear—I don’t think that’s possible. But maybe to offer a different lens. Maybe to make your heart ache a little less, or to spark a bit of light in a hopeless mind.
The Opposite of Good Is Not Evil—It’s Indifference
There’s a teaching from the Sufi tradition that keeps circling back to me: The opposite of good is not evil, it’s indifference. The opposite of love is not hatred, it’s indifference.
This cuts deep because it reveals the real test of being human. To witness suffering—whether across the world or across the street—and choose not to look away. To let it matter. To let it move you.
In The Emerald’s piece “Oh Justice,” there’s a powerful question: How do we respond to injustice without simply becoming the mirror image of what we find loathsome? How do we respond without just reacting?
This is a spiritual crisis as much as it is political or economic. When a government orders snipers and machine guns on its own people. When thousands are killed for demanding the right to feed their families. When hospitals are raided to arrest the wounded. When an entire nation is kept in darkness to hide massacres—this isn’t just a political failure. It’s a collapse of our shared humanity.
We face a choice: Do we become indifferent to protect ourselves? Or do we stay connected, knowing that “if I am unmoved by their suffering, then in some capacity, I have failed the test of being human”?
The practice—and it is a practice—is deciding you will not be indifferent to suffering. Not because it’s easy. Not because it feels good. But because we’re all wrapped up in each other, and their pain is part of ours.
Hope Is Not Denial—It’s a Survival Trait
I used to think hope was naive. A way to set yourself up for heartbreak. After watching movements fail again and again, I told myself: don’t be hopeful. Protect yourself.
But Jane Goodall says something that makes me think: “Hope is a survival trait. Without it, we perish.”
Hope isn’t idealism. It doesn’t expect everything to be fair or easy or good. That’s denial. Real hope doesn’t deny the darkness—it responds to it.
Hope says: Yes, this is terrible. Yes, people are suffering. Yes, the odds are stacked against us. And still, I will act.
Lisa Olivera writes: “Sometimes, all of this is so fucking hard. Sometimes, it all feels impossible—this weight, this violence, this grief. And right alongside the hardness, there is the vision of what could be, and that vision becomes an anchor to turn toward when the hardness is too much to bear.”
That’s the tension we have to hold. The grief and the vision. The pain and the possibility. Not one or the other, but both.
Your Sadness Connects You Deepest
Here’s something I keep coming back to, from Julie Zhuo: “Irritation and frustration shield anger. Anger shields sadness. Sadness is the thing we fear most. But sadness also connects us deepest.”
We avoid sadness because it feels like drowning. But sadness is what makes us human. It’s what lets us see each other clearly. When we let ourselves feel it—really feel it—we connect to something larger than ourselves.
And maybe that’s what this moment is asking of us. Not to be strong. Not to have answers. Just to feel what’s happening and let it connect us.
What We Can Do
Jane Goodall offers a framework that helps me when everything feels overwhelming. She says hope requires four things:
Realistic goals - not fantasies, but concrete actions we can take
Realistic pathways - ways to actually achieve those goals
Confidence - the belief that our actions matter
Support - people to help us through the hard parts
Right now, my goal is simple: bear witness. Tell the stories. Don’t let the darkness go unnoticed. Pass messages for people who can’t speak. Show up for the Iranians in my community who are carrying this alone.
These aren’t grand gestures. They won’t topple regimes. But they keep the light alive.
As one writer put it: “Hope does not deny all the difficulty and danger that exists, but it is not stopped by them. There is a lot of darkness, but our actions create the light.”
Keep Going
So wherever you are, whatever weight you’re carrying, here’s what I want to say:
You don’t have to be strong. You don’t have to have answers. You just have to stay connected.
Feel what you need to feel. Let it move through you. Find the people who will sit with you in it. And when you can, do one small thing to create light for someone else.
That’s enough. It has to be.
I don’t usually share personal pieces like this, but some weeks require it. If this resonated, I’d love to hear from you. And if you know someone who needs to read this right now, please pass it along.
With love and solidarity,
Amir 👋
Previously on Pursuit:
