Positive changes come from hope
Some challenges can feel impossible to overcome. Maybe you’re feeling the weight of the world right now? Perhaps a sense of loss is upon you, financial stress or uncertainty? Maybe you just can’t find the open door, the one that allows you to step forward into a better place.
Our human capacity to endure, though, and to feel a glimmer of hope when the world around us feels dark is boundless. In 1861, American poet Emily Dickinson wrote: “Hope is the thing with feathers. That perches in the soul. And sings the tune without the words, And never stops — at all.” Hope provides us with an ability to see beyond our existing circumstances — to hold onto the possibility of positive change.
For me, hope is a strength of the inner spirit. It’s a force of balance and gentle grounding. And it’s this force, this inner light, that we need to unbuckle from the overwhelm and breathe into the present moment.
The notion of hope is far more powerful, protective and lasting than pure optimism alone. Optimism takes away agency. It denies complexity. And we see too much of this sentiment — echoes of toxic positivism — dished out across the internet at large today. This can be damaging. Psychologists argue that optimism generally rests power in people and circumstances outside of your control.
The theory of hope is a little different, though. Feeling hopeful is more than just thinking positive thoughts. It’s an empowered act that acknowledges suffering and uncertainty, whilst allowing for inner resolution and the capacity to create change. Maintaining a sense of hope is the ability to hold competing parts in your mind, different dialogues and opposing potentials, all at once. And to know that while an outcome may not be optimal, and even far from it, a flicker of meaning may be derived that can provide you with a sense of purpose and lead you further along the way.
The work of renowned Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, who spent time in nazi concentration camps, draws on humanistic and existential philosophy anchored in real life experience. In his international bestselling book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl writes: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Thus, the aptitude for hopefulness is woven into the fabric of our being and when lit with the full charge of personal will it allows us to take hold of the moment and to find greater peace. Far from being a passive emotion, hope is a verb. It’s something that you do and the direction to which you walk.
Fundamentally, feeling hopeful is a choice. It gives us fuel to endure. Perhaps just for a few minutes, five or maybe 10, and then five minutes more — moment to moment, as we move through the mire. Numerous studies indicate that people who see the best, through the worst, often experience a healthier, happier mind, with lower rates of depression and a higher degree of social support.
It’s the threads of hope which spin on the loom of creation, as a friend said this week, that allow us to overcome suffering — not to diminish the degree of challenge or pain, but to know that a brighter outlook and potential can arise from within. Hope, when measured and tethered to experience and reason, can be the light that guides us on our path as we inch forward in uncertain times. Hold on to it.
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This article was first published in The West Australian in Renée Gardiner’s weekly column in Agenda, 3 December 2022.