After taking a bit of a detour from my regular lunchtime walk, I recently found myself on the corner of Hope Street - literally.
When I stopped to process that for a moment, I started to think - what if HOPE wasn’t a place we stopped by every now and then. Instead, it was a place we lived.
What is hope? An aspiration? A belief? A mindset? Miriam Webster says hope is “…to cherish a desire with anticipation; to want something to happen or be true.” Maybe it’s a little bit of all three.
“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul — and sings the tunes without the words — and never stops at all.” — Emily Dickinson
In researching hope, I learned that the act of wanting something to happen in the future actually improves our well-being today. It hadn’t occurred to me before; hope is really a form of goal setting - the target, what I am hoping for; the motivation, what do I need to do to make it happen; and what I think is the most important – faith, the belief that it will happen.
Hope without motivation and action is a wish. The proverbial wanting to win the lottery but not buying a ticket. It differs from optimism. Optimism is a general outlook that life and events will turn out well or get better. Hope gets specific. I hope I can travel to Europe next summer.
Interestingly, something I hadn’t previously considered is that hope also comes with an element of fear – what if what I hope for doesn’t come true? In her article The Psychology of Hope and Fear, psychoanalyst and speaker Joyce McFadden wrote “The best part of fear is that it teaches us what we're afraid to lose, and the best part of hope is that once we know what we're afraid of losing we can set about nurturing it and keeping it strong and safe.” I love this perspective, and as perspectives are supposed to, it has me thinking differently about fear. Maybe I can use fear to my advantage instead of feeling derailed by it. I wonder how many times I may have let my fear get in the way of hope.
I’m pretty sure that life on Hope Street isn’t all roses and sunshine. Like any other street, there are going to be days, maybe even weeks when the light has to push through the darkness of disappointments, setbacks and betrayals. The difference is that Hope Street has a secret ingredient: RESILIENCE - the ability to bounce back. I think this quote from Martin Luther King Jr. sums it up nicely:
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
Even for the most resilient among us, bouncing back isn’t always a given. Karyn Hall Ph.D. suggests in her article Finding Hope that when you’ve lost some of your bounce - do what you know you can do. “When you are in despair, taking one step that is out of your routine can help break the sense of powerlessness you have. Make your bed. Cook dinner. Talk to a friend.”
The absence of hope is hopelessness. Like a dense fog, it can settle in after a series of letdowns, failures or disappointments. Hopelessness is not being able to see a way out of the dark and feeling that you may no longer have control over your circumstances. How do you reignite hope from here? With love and support for sure.
“The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.”
- Barack Obama
Hope is cultivated by an open mind and nurtured by a strong heart. An open mind sees setbacks as opportunities for learning and growth. A strong heart is kind, first and foremost to it’s landlord.
The takeaways here? Believe. Try. Plan. Dream.
“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.” -Barbara Kingsolver
For more information on resilience, read Resilience is your Superpower.
Some additional reads on hope can be found on the Resources page.
