I feel like a broken record when I say this year has been tough. While I had been referring to 2020, so many of the hardships we faced then, continue here, in 2021. It’s been on my mind, what keeps us going? What gives us strength and what helps us survive in the face of adversity? Turns out, hope plays a pretty big role. Well that’s great, you might say, but how do I access this? For many,  hope seems abundant one moment and inaccessible the next. 

One barrier that dampens our hope is the idea it is binary. We have it or we don’t. Hope, like any other feeling, is complex. We do not have to be 100% hopeful with no doubts to access the benefits of hope. How does it feel to know you can engage in hope imperfectly? You can be cautiously hopeful or feel scared and sad, but still experience a sense of hope. It’s an unfair expectation to believe that hope will always be a constant. Hope waxes and wanes, and that's okay! Sometimes, we are very engaged with it and other times it feels further away. This is normal and to be expected. There is no secret sauce or special pill. It's a practice. We can cultivate it, grow it and sustain it. This is really good news as it means we can all access the warm benefits that hope offers with a little energy and focus. Dr. Kaethe Weingarten’s article, “Reasonable Hope”, proposes that we shift from thinking of a hope as a noun, to hope as  a verb, to avoid the binary hope trap. 

Given the tumultuous history of humans, it seems only natural that hope and resiliency are paired together as a power team in the face of crisis and traumatic events. In the movie, Paradise Road,  a group of women held in a Japanese internment during WWII  start a choir. Even as they are beaten, starved and humiliated, they continue singing. Through dismal circumstances, they find a way to hold hope close to them, creating communal resiliency. Although this is a movie, it is based on a true story,and I think it highlights the stubborn power of hope. It also highlights how hope is sustained, prolonged and built collectively. Hope thrives in community. It gathers folks around a common cause. There is a technique called staggered breathing in choral singing, where people take breathes at different times to sustain a long note. If done right, the audience does not notice that the note isn’t being sustained by one single breath. The same phenomenon exists when we build hope, communally. Sometimes we don’t have hope, but we can live vicariously through the person next to us until we can take a breath and start singing again. Hope is birthed, grown and maintained in the collective.

Try to avoid the all or nothing mindset of ‘I have hope or I don’t’ and instead believe in small changes. When something goes right acknowledge the hope that arrives. How does it help you hold on when you notice the small changes? Another way to practice accessing hope is to focus on the 95%! Humans are conditioned to focus on the negative. This survival technique developed to save our lives. It also makes our lives feel much darker than the reality usually is. Step back from the 5% of negativity. Notice that you are safe, you slept in a bed last night, and you have eaten a meal today. You can go beyond basic survival too! Do you have someone in your life you love? Someone that loves you? Do you have a hobby you enjoy? Did you get to do it this week? Even for those of us that have really struggled these last 14months, we can answer yes to many of these questions. If you really want to challenge yourself, take that a step further. Once you have acknowledged the 95% of your life, sit in that feeling of gratitude, hope and love. What's it like to bask in their warmth? 

When hope feels far away try celebrating! Find little ways to celebrate the day. Celebrations help you stay close to hope by reminding you of all the things that are going right, all the things that are worth it. Is there a celebration you really appreciate? Maybe it's celebrating the food on the table, or a moment of silence, maybe sharing laughter with a friend. How do your hands feel when you run them along smooth wood? How do your eyes feel when they see a new leaf of your plant bloom? These moments are all worthy of celebrating. Take a moment and indulge.

While we continue to face challenging times, we continue to preserve, survive and live with hope. I encourage you to be curious about the ways barriers dampen the voice of hope. I invite you to experiment and practice different and creative ways of engaging in hope and loving the world! 

References:

Weingarten, Kaethe Ph.D. “Reasonable Hope: Constructs, Clinical Applications and Support.” This is a link to her writings.