Finding Hope In Trying Times
I’ve been a bit quiet in recent months, at least on this forum. I try to make a habit of only sharing thoughts and ideas when they feel worthy of your attention — or when the “spirit” moves me, so to speak. But now, not only the current state of the world, but also the confluence of some serendipitous reading material, prompts me to meditate on the concept of “hope” for a moment.
Some questions to contemplate:
Are we more interested in sadness or possibilities?
Does a focus on possibilities necessarily deny any current despair? Can the two coexist?
Or, perhaps better said:
Can we live in hope, even when society seems like a burning cesspool of cynicism and antagonism?
Is hope merely a naive concept in a nihilistic world?
Barack Obama, in the mid-to-late aughts, made hope his signature brand. He even called his second book, published in 2006, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (which assumes there was a dream, it somehow got lost, and the book will guide us back to it). “Yes we can!” emboldened large swaths of the electorate in his 2008 campaign, with simple buzzwords like “progress,” “change,” and (of course) “hope” — not nuanced policy proposals — lifting spirits and expectations.
Each person can determine how that national infusion of hope unfolded for them and for our country (and why). Regardless of your answer, you might feel a bit jaded about hope in this moment, and that hope-filled movement might seem like a distant era or a quaint dream in contrast to the realities and rhetoric of 2020.
By contrast, in Jenny Offill’s recent 2020 novel, Weather, themes of doom, despair, and end-time preparedness dominate. And yet, the book’s protagonist feels simultaneously compelled to offer an “obligatory note of hope” — so much so that Offill ends the novel with a lone URL: www.obligatorynoteofhope.com.
On one page of the site, she highlights quotes from some of our deepest thinkers and wisest sages, offering guidance for surviving dark moments of history in her 45 “Tips for Trying Times.” Tips like “Notice What You Have,” “Listen Sympathetically,” and “Expect a Movement” speak directly to us in this particular moment. (Another I love: Question the Imperative, which echoes some of my sentiments on our relationships with technology)
A pandemic, social and political unrest, multiple states on fire, and an unprecedentedly divided nation might prompt you to give hope the side-eye. (And trust me — I hear you.) We’ve seen the hope pendulum swing significantly so far this century, begging a return to my initial question: Is hope still relevant and possible?
History provides some answers: We could look at history as an indication that doom and gloom is our recurring collective fate or we could see it as proof of perpetual resilience. New connections, new ideas, new movements, new innovations — this is the stuff of hope, now and throughout history, and there are no signs that any of these are slowing. So hope is not dead, even when it might feel overshadowed.
Psychology also weighs in: You might think that some of us are psychologically predisposed to and built for hope and others aren’t. Psychologist Martin Seligman would disagree: We’ve all been around people who insist on putting a positive spin on everything. It’s annoying and disingenuous. (Fun fact: I once dated a guy who professed to slipping on a “negativity shield” in the face of anything that fell short of sunshine and rainbows. We were not a match.) Fortunately, perma-positivity isn’t the goal. We can recognize the crappiness of any given situation, while also retaining hope for the future. It isn’t one or the other, and that combination provides the winning formula:
Acknowledge when things are bad + look for opportunities to transform the future
So to return to my other initial question: Is an embrace of hope a denial of suffering and reality?
NO. It’s important to do both! Reverse it: Acknowledging suffering and difficult realities is the PATH to a genuine feeling of hope. It’s both/and, not either/or.
A note on individual guilt: It may feel like either personal hope or despair about a relationship, your financial or professional situation, or your individual health is selfish amidst “bigger” societal concerns. So if you need permission, I’m giving it to you: Celebrate triumphs as they come (it doesn’t make you insensitive) and call attention to individual needs (it doesn’t mean you aren’t also concerned with society at large). Just remember you are part of a collective, as well. Also, give other people permission to inhabit both spaces simultaneously and remember: both/and.
I don’t have all the answers to this moment’s challenges (sorry!). And there are plenty of days when despair feels more prominent than hope for me, both personally and societally. But suffering and frustration can be motivating and even clarifying. So while I’m not advocating wallowing, I am inviting you to meditate on any current discomfort or outrage and use the wisdom you derive to motivate, construct a plan, and take action. (Not everyone’s action plan will look alike, but we should all have one.)
Let me leave you with a few of the poetic tips from the “obligatory note of hope” that feel most urgent and achievable:
Forget Heroism
I have to tell you this: this whole thing is not about heroism. It’s about decency. It may seem a ridiculous idea, but the only way to fight the plague is with decency.
— Albert Camus, The Plague
Answer the Call
Yes, it looks bleak. But you are still alive now. You are alive with all the others, in this present moment. And because the truth is speaking in the work, it unlocks the heart. And there’s such a feeling and experience of adventure. It’s like a trumpet call to a great adventure. In all great adventures there comes a time when the little band of heroes feels totally outnumbered and bleak, like Frodo in Lord of the Rings or Pilgrim in Pilgrim’s Progress. You learn to say ‘It looks bleak. Big deal, it looks bleak.’
— Joanna Macy, How to Prepare for Whatever Comes Next
Be Hopeful, Not Optimistic
Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. In short, I think that the deepest and most important form of hope, the only one that can keep us above water and urge us to good works, and the only true source of the breathtaking dimension of the human spirit and its efforts, is something we get, as it were, from “elsewhere.” It is also this hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually to try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now.
— Vaclav Havel, Disturbing the Peace
Which resonates most with you? What are your tips for finding hope in trying times? Please share in the comments!