If neither you nor any of your friends or loved ones have been snatched off the street or kidnapped at work by masked plainclothes agents of the state, or fired from your job at some government agency, or chased out of your school for not being a white heterosexual male, and your local habitat has yet to be ravaged by a flash flood or wildfire or rampant mining and drilling, and your bicycle has not been confiscated by the pro-pollution police, and your health care has not been revoked, and you have not been hit by any bombs or rockets or drones or raw-sewage balloons tossed in desperation out of some squalid deportation concentration camp, lucky you.

That’s the way I’m feeling anyway, because if I weren’t reading or listening to the news my life would feel more or less normal, comfortable, able to appreciate everyday pleasures as if the world out there were not in throes of cataclysmic convulsions, techno-futuristic chaos, primitive barbarism, political corruption and all-around dysfunction. I am grateful for every moment of good health, good weather, good food, good friends, good art of any kind — all the little gifts that make life bearable, livable, maybe even enjoyable.

Recently I attended a lovely wedding at a hilltop venue in the Santa Cruz Mountains on a perfect warm sunny afternoon that felt like the idyllic setting of some Italian movie and was reminded that optimism is still possible, that young people are still beautiful and that even as the years run away like wild horses over the hills there are still present moments to savor and futures to look hopefully forward to. My twice divorced, jaded, badly scarred heart skipped a beat or two witnessing the happiness of the bride and groom and their friends bouncing all over the dance floor and yelling their heads off.

Most of the older people I know, even if untouched directly by the violations of autocratic cruelty, are pretty gloomy about what their kids and grandchildren can anticipate, and feel pretty helpless to do much about it. Because while it is better to try to mitigate the damage than surrender to despair, the toasted Earth makes it hard to believe we can save ourselves from what we’ve done to ourselves.

But I think it’s worthwhile to march and rally and demonstrate and protest the power of the powers that be — and better yet to contribute in some small way as an individual to our collective benefit or betterment and thereby encourage others to rise to the occasion with their best selves. The bigger the crowds and more fearless the opposition, the more insecure the tyrant will feel, which unfortunately will drive him to even more ruthless and reactionary mobilizations of the military and the secret police against anyone who dissents.

Which is why I expect things to get worse before they get even worse. If the overlord is backed into a corner or up against a wall, his panic attack will be all the more aggressive. Even if he were to choke to death on a steak, he has modeled such shamelessly amoral and cruel behavior that it has corrupted his acolytes and the next generation of despots with delusions of omnipotence and with intolerance for any deviation from their bottomless bottom line.

That’s why I don’t worry about a thing and don’t cultivate false hope of any political or spiritual turnaround, of any revolution or heroine on a white horse riding to our rescue, because that is a romantic fantasy. Instead I’m paying closer attention to what means and matters most to me and trying to remember to be kind and to keep in mind the almost unimaginable suffering of peoples and persons all over this sorry globe without letting the sorrow and the tragedy discourage me from what is worth doing anyway because it’s the right thing to do.

Stephen Kessler’s column appears on Saturdays.