“To hope is to gamble. It’s to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk.”

(Rebecca Solnit)

We all need to know we are OK.

It can be easy, as we face into the gathering despair of pandemic, the burnt skies of climate crisis or the loneliness of ecological collapse, to believe that our situation is hopeless, that we have been oblivious to the signs of ‘tipping point’ for way too long and that we will leave our children on a fatally damaged world.

And it’s tempting to distract ourselves from our fate by musing over the latest version of the moonshot: that there will be a miracle cure for our illnesses; plans cold fusion will work out; that flying electric cars will save us or, perhaps, (some of?) humanity will find refuge on another planet.

But, though our scepticism might be well justified, we need to hold onto our sense of hope.

Rebecca Solnit writes:

“Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul; it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation.”

As any depressive will tell you, hope is intrinsic. We find it within ourselves and in each other; we can nurture it, we can collectively build hope and with it comes the resolve and capability to act. Regardless of the reality of our circumstances, we can always choose hope.

Over the last year or so, I’ve come to realise that, while we can find the skill and resilience to work with transition, our fears reside in the loss we imagine will come with the change. It’s not so much that life will be different, but that my attachments to the present restrain me.

So, as my materialist lifestyle becomes increasingly fragile and jeopardised, I can find joy in community and connection. Even though I might be masked and physically remote, I can offer kindness and consideration. When my technology fails me, I will resort to art, story-telling, poetry, music, song and dance.

I’m starting to realise that things will be change but there is still hope.

And, as we turn to each other, we can bet again on the future and find the energy to act.

Together, we will be OK.

Notes:

If you’ve yet to take a look at Rebecca Solnit’s work, I can personally vouch for ‘Hope in the Dark’ and ‘A Field Guide to Getting Lost’. She is, of course, known for the term ‘mansplaining’ following publication of her collection of essays ‘Men Explain Things to Me’. You can find the story of her encounter of a man who imposed himself on her to insistently pronounce on a very important book she should read (in fact, she had written it….) here.

In ‘Coming Back to Life’, Joanna Macy tells us ‘that numbing of mind and heart is already upon us - in the diversions we create for ourselves as individuals and nations, in the fights we pick, the aims we pursue, the stuff we buy.” The book contains a wealth of practical exercises to help us reconnect to our experience of the world while finding the courage to act, despite worsening social and ecological conditions.

Finally, take a look at one of the classics on hope, Viktor Frankl’s ‘Man’s Search For Meaning’, based on his experiences of the holocaust in the Nazi concentration camps.

See Also:

Sustain

Yearning