May in Fairbanks, Alaska, is naturally hopeful. The sun is back for fourteen hours a day, heading toward the midnight sun and the glorious summer solstice of June 21—about 20 hours of manic electromagnetic energy.
In May, we witness “green up,” where tender little tree buds pop up as first, light lime, and then, overnight, avocado green. Nature gorges on the light.
How can you not feel a swell of hope?
Yet, for critical thinkers, hope can feel romantic, naïve, fleeting, disingenuous and even delusional. Like a birthday card from your insurance company.
Critical hope is different.
Critical hope comes from a long line of philosophy, theology and social justice. It means that you know exactly what’s going on, see it all, yet CHOOSE to keep going.
The ancient Greeks had a sophisticated view of hope, by connecting it to courage and agency anchored to past experience but also future-directedness and the space-giving question of “What’s possible?” MLK predicated his work on anticipatory hope, assuring his followers that relief was around the corner: “How long? Not long!” Gay politician and activist, Harvey Milk, in the seventies, famously gave a stump speech where he said, “You have to give them hope!”
Women writers have written extensively about hope in the face of adversity. Consider Emily Dickenson, Jane Austen, Audre Lourde, bell hooks, Maya Angelou, and Rebecca Solnit.
These are all thoughtful, critical thinkers who understood power, hardship and structural injustice.
Right now, we are experiencing a lot of political and economic instability, and it’s hard to feel hopeful or stable. We all have SO MANY QUESTIONS about the future. It’s like walking a tightrope with the worst flu of your life.
As a critical thinker, you may have a hard time accessing genuine hope. You want to be an informed citizen, so you probably consume news from various trusted sources, as much as you can tolerate. But news can cause deep anger, frustration and reactivity.
So how do you create hope you really believe in? What is personally meaningful and within your control? What do you honestly have the time and energy for?
It is self-care, self-compassion and self-love which fuels the energy you need to be an agent of the world. And if you think about it, I mean really think, you have NO CHOICE. Morgan Freeman, in his role as a prisoner in the film Shawshank Redemption, said something I will never forget: “You get busy living or you get busy dying.” Hope is an inside job. Hope is a daily practice. And how you show up for yourself travels to all of your external efforts and interactions.
You cannot greet the day without feeling hopeful. Hope is actually a rigorous, mindful emotion, not a naïve mindset. It means you have intentionally CHOSEN to carry on, DESPITE the craziness and injustice.
I hope you find time to practice hope today. I hope you have days where you gorge on it.