Hope is a choice. That’s how I seeit. Viktor Frankl, neurologist, psychologist, and famously a concentration camp survivor, said, “Let us not fall prey to what we fear, but rather live into the direction of hope.” He attributes this sentiment to his method of survival. Duringthe three years of his imprisonment, he was moved to four different camps and in each one, he observed that for the most part, survivors were people who had found some hope for the future.
The above is an extreme example but if Mr. Frankl could find it there, we can find it in the uncertainty of our world today. Hope may not change outside circumstances, but it can change the way we see things. The way we react. It can change our thinking and our ability
to embrace the current moment with optimism so we can lessen our suffering. It can remind us that at any moment, life can shift in a multitude of ways that arelargely unforeseen. And it does. We just need to keep our hearts open and find some patience.
I see hope as a counterpoint to despair which in many cases is a bad habit. We’re so used to expecting the worst, we start grieving it before it even gets here. My mother used to say to me, “Don’t get your hopes up. You might get disappointed.” Was disappointment
lethal? Did it make sense to avoid feeling good because I might feel badly in the not too distant future? This is how I was programmed and I continue to do deep work to turn that around.
It isn’t an easy thing to do. When I feel discouraged and lost in grief, optimism doesn’t just land in my lap. I have to name how I feel, stand back for a moment and search for a different way to look at life. I don’t do this to be seen as spiritual. I don’t do this so people will like me. I choose hope because it makes me feel better.
Some months back, I told a friend that I was feeling hopeless about the political situation in our country. She reminded me that everything changes and not to abandon myself. I followed her
suggestion. I stopped imagining the worst. I chose a more expansive way of looking at my world. “Choose” being the operative word. I kept reminding myself that anything is possible – and something did, unexpectedly and dramatically.
Alice in Wonderland who fell down the rabbit hole into an unfamiliar and backward world said to herself, “There’s no use trying. One simply can’t believe in impossible things.” But before she found
her way back home, she had learned to believe in the extraordinary and embrace the fantastical. I’m not suggesting that having a positive outlook means that everything will turn out well or that hoping will make it so. What I am suggesting is that when we give up the illusion that our life will unfold exactly the way we want it to, if we dare to imagine a kinder future without being rigid about it, we can find some peace in the moment, no matter what’s happening. Why waste precious time imagining the worst when you can hope for
positive changes that you can’t see yet?
One of the few things that never changes, is the fact that everything changes. It sounds like a contradiction in terms but it isn’t. The pendulum continues to swing and with a little patience,
hopelessness can turn into hope. Fear can turn into courage. Anger can turn into compassion.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.” That sounds like a tall order but if we allow ourselves to dream, we can find a way to
detach from unhealthy delusions and accept the possibility of a desired reality. We can see our situation, good or bad, as a stepping stone to improve our lives and calm our nerves.
In Greek mythology, the first woman on earth was Pandora. The myth goes that the god Zeuss gave her a box and admonished her not to open it. She tried to obey but her curiosity got the better of her. She opened the box and all manner of evils and miseries were
unleashed into the world. When she realized what was escaping, she quickly closed the box and the only thing left was hope.
One interpretation is that the evils that Pandora let loose represent the obstacles and difficulties in our lives today, while hope represents the optimism and resilience required to cope with and overcome these challenges. In the philosophy of Buddhism, when “hope” is directed toward a specific result, it can open us up to suffering. But when it’s not attached to a particular outcome and we see it as an attitude, it can offer us a way to find compassion for others and ourselves.
In my case, hope helps me stop telling myself scary stories. It not only lightens my soul. It not only frees me from despair. It also sparks my imagination. It shows me the light in the darkness. It shows me openings where I thought there were none. When my writing students read their pieces out loud, I point out areas where they left gaps that are asking to be filled in, places in the narrative where they could crack open the armor, go deeper and see the secrets that they’ve been protecting. And they do.
Leonard Cohen wrote,
“There is a crack, a crack in everything. \
That’s how the light gets in.”
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