For the first time in a long time, I’m optimistic about the future of San Francisco. I know that’s a weird thing to say considering most of us barely leave the house, tons of people don’t have jobs and many of our favorite institutions keep closing down. But honestly, I can’t remember the last time I felt SF was so full of hope.

But as we lurch toward what the new normal will look like after this harrowing experience, I wonder, have the people in power learned anything?

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So much of what I do now, so much of my devotion to this problematic, maddening, beautiful, brilliant, heartbreaking, mystifying city is tied to the way San Francisco made me feel when I was in my early 20s. It was a city of dreamers and believers, seekers and preachers, people who didn’t belong anywhere else, and never wanted to anyways. It was a city of “hell yes!” in a world of too much “no.”

I want to walk through our thoroughfares en masse, in unison, in celebration of something — anything — instead of in protest. I want to hold hands with a stranger while we do this, just because it feels right.

The story goes that when the Great Library of Alexandria burned down in 48 B.C., it had a copy of every book in the “known world.” Its destruction represented the annihilation of so much of the world’s knowledge that humanity lost things that are now gone forever. What’s remarkable is that each of us holds, in our pocket or bag, a device that connects us to infinitely more information than could have ever been held in a million Great Libraries.

Has staring at technology and navigating sidewalks where there are often mentally ill people made us more anti-social?

For the past couple years I’ve been doing something extra special for my mom on Mother’s Day. It’s not flowers, it’s not candy, it’s not even a card. I’ve been helping bail someone else’s mother out of jail. And I’ll be doing the same this year.

“The city is cruel to the weak, deaf to those who love it, and subservient only to those who are wrecking it. Like all neurotics, the city hates its friends, and loves its enemies.”