I’ve been thinking a lot about hope the last few years, and even more so recently. Is hope optimism? Is it a sort of faith? Is it naive? Is it a privilege? I explore all of that and talk about what hope means to me now, with help from a few books.
Table of Contents:
Playlist
Skeptical of Hope
Hope is a Discipline
The only lasting truth is Change
A belief that what we do might matter…
Hope is a Privilege
Books Mentioned
Addendum
Listen while you read
Skeptical of Hope
“Hope” gets a bad rap in our cynical world.
Hope sounds naive.
Hope sounds like toxic positivity.
Hope sounds like a particularly annoying form of apathy.
Hope sounds like prayer.
Hope sounds like ignoring reality.
I completely understand this perception of the word, because this is how I’ve always viewed it. I have a particular memory from my teen years that bubbles up every time I hear the word. The vague memory floats around a quote, something about “hope is all we have”, from some cutesy little book of sayings for Christians.
“Because hope is all we have,” my sister and I would laugh.
How fucking depressing. How useless. How meaningless.
If hope is all we have, then surely…we have nothing.
Hope was a useless optimism, a denial of agency, an apathetic acceptance of circumstances.
Hope was defeat.
I dismissed hope as something for religious types—people who prayed, and had something to pray to. Hope was for people who didn’t believe in their own power, who left everything up to fate—a concept I don’t believe in.
A range of life circumstances over the last 3 years, both personal and political, have pushed me to reassess this word, this notion.
Whatever it is that has changed about me, or about the world, I just know I feel differently now. Hope doesn’t sound so dirty anymore, though my deep-rooted reflex of cynicism still pops up when I hear it. Maybe hope IS all we have, but maybe it’s more powerful than I gave it credit for.
Hope is a Discipline
My new perspective on hope stems almost entirely from abolitionist and radical thinking. If we are going to create a better world, we must first be able to imagine a better world. And the act of imagining itself is a form of hope, isn’t it?
In 2021, I read We Do This ‘til We Free Us, a collection of interviews and writings from Mariame Kaba. In it, there’s a short article titled “Hope is a Discipline”, in which Kaba explains her version of “hope”.
“Hope doesn’t preclude feeling sadness or frustration or anger or any other emotion that makes total sense. Hope isn’t an emotion, you know? Hope is not optimism.”
Hope is not optimism…
“I believe that there’s always potential for transformation and for change. And that is in any direction, good or bad. The idea of hope being a discipline is something I heard from a nun many years ago who was talking about it in conjunction with making sure we were of the world and in the world. Living in the afterlife already in the present was kind of a form of escape, but it was really, really important for us to live in the world and be of the world. The hope that she was talking about was this grounded hope that was practiced every day, that people actually practiced all the time.”
Be in the world and of the world…
“Hope is a discipline and…we have to practice it every single day. Because the world we live in, it’s easy to feel a sense of hopelessness, that everything is all bad all the time, that nothing is going to change ever, that people are evil and bad at the bottom…I understand why people feel that way. I just choose differently. I choose to think a different way, and I choose to act in a different way.”
I revisit this regularly to remind myself that hope does not require a Pollyanna attitude—something I’ve never been accused of possessing, mind you. It also does not require leaving things up to a higher power. What it is, for me, is a reminder that it’s worth it to keep going, that desire is beautiful, and that change is possible. As Kaba said, I choose to think differently, I choose to act differently.
I choose to act—with the hope that my actions will matter, and the belief that what I want is possible.
But why does this still feel like such a spiritual idea to me? Like something almost make-believe? And why am I so averse to spirituality of any kind?
The only lasting truth is Change
In July 2022, I read Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower for the first time. Since then, I’ve read it a second time, and then I read the next book in the series, Parable of the Talent, this past summer. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this series lately, and I’ll certainly be writing about it in more depth.
But I mention it now, because the religion created in the series, Earthseed, felt like another key to my changing perspective on hope.
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
God
Is Change.
This is the main tenet of Earthseed. Change is the only constant in the universe, in life. It is not predictable, but it is inevitable. We can’t stop it, but we can help shape it. This idea of transformation as something powerful and amoral struck a chord. It also reminded me of Mariame Kaba’s words:
”I believe that there’s always potential for transformation and for change. And that is in any direction, good or bad.”
Anyways, this made me think: If change is the only constant, then perhaps hope is the only remedy. Hope spurs us to act, with a belief that we are contributing to change in a positive way. It’s not guaranteed, and we might be wrong, but we have no other way around the block. We must simply act, without fully knowing what happens next.
A belief that what we do might matter…
In Rebecca Solnit’s Call Them By Their True Names, this idea of hope as an acknowledgement of not-knowing came up again.
“Hope for me has meant a sense that the future is unpredictable, and that we don’t actually know what will happen, but know we may be able to write it ourselves.”
It echos what I found in Earthseed, too. Change is guaranteed, and we have the power to shape, mold, and direct that Change. Rather than leaving the way things change up to fate—or to the more powerful in society, those who already shape everything—this idea of hope inspires us to act, and to be fully engaged in what’s happening.
“Hope is a belief that what we do might matter, an understanding that the future is not yet written. It’s an informed, astute open-mindedness about what can happen and what role we might play in it. Hope looks forward but draws its energies from the past, from knowing histories, including our victories, and their complexities and imperfections.”
Hope gives us the energy to keep going, to do what we can, despite the feelings of fruitlessness. We cannot see what happens after us. We cannot know how our actions will influence the world, or even just one person. But hope means we do things anyways.
“You do what you can. What you’ve done may do more than you can imagine for generations to come. You plant a seed and a tree grows from it; will there be fruit, shade, habitat for birds, more seeds, a forest, wood to build a cradle or a house? You don’t know. A tree can live much longer than you. So will an idea, and sometimes the changes that result from accepting that new idea about what is true, or right, just might remake the world. You do what you can do; you do your best; what what you do does is not up to you.”
And this planting of seeds, this growing of trees, this spreading of ideas, calls back to Earthseed and abolition and revolution and creating new worlds…it calls back to everything I’m interested in. And everything I care about, requires hope.
Hope is a Privilege
Maybe now is a good time to acknowledge that I am also an idealist (and an Aquarius). Solnit says, “cynics are often disappointed idealists,” and that’s true, for me. I’m overwhelmed by my desires for a different world, and maybe that clouds my judgement. I won’t pretend that I always approach things practically or pragmatically. Maybe talking about hope seems silly. Maybe hope and hopelessness aren’t the only two options. I don’t know.
Even now, I’m afraid of sounding too earnest or naive. I’m afraid of being too vulnerable, and hope makes you vulnerable. As a comfortably-cynical person, as a non-religious person, as an extremely privileged person, “hope” still gives me the ick sometimes. Isn’t it easy to talk about hope when I already have everything I need in this world?
I feel compelled to explain myself, to prove that I am as jaded as the next, to prove that I don’t live in a fantasy land where “good things just happen”. But why do I prefer despair? Why is that more comfortable?
“Naïve cynicism loves itself more than the world; it defends itself in lieu of defending the world. I’m interested in the people who love the world more, and in what they have to tell us, which varies from day to day, subject to subject. Because what we do begins with what we believe we can do. It begins with being open to the possibilities and interested in the complexities.” — Rebecca Solnit, Call Them By Their True Names
Anyways, I do choose hope. I am hopeful, because I need to be. I continue on, with hope, because I want the world to be better than it is now, and hopelessness won’t help.
And if hope is a privilege, then I owe it to the world to use whatever remnants of it I possess.
Books Mentioned
We Do This ‘til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba
Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
Call Them By Their True Names by Rebecca Solnit
Addendum
Whenever I write a newsletter, I give it a few days to breathe before deciding if I want to send it. I know how I am, continuously ruminating and changing my perspective ever so slightly. It’s part of the reason I am so inconsistent here—I am always writing, but I am never sure.
This is one of those times when I second-guess everything I’ve said. Talking about hope feels so fucking awful right now. Embarrassing, actually. All the negative associations come spiraling right back: it’s naive, apathetic, dismissive, useless. I wonder if I only started writing about hope as a way to soothe myself?
But hope or hopelessness, it doesn’t change anything, does it? Because what I’m really talking around is genocide, and grief. There are things to hope for in the future, but the immediate reality isn’t concerned with the future, is it?
Hope.
Hope.
Hope.
Does it mean anything? Am I just echoing a sound, a sound someone created to communicate a concept that I don’t understand? Am I imagining prayer beads, and clasped palms, and golden clouds again?
No, that’s not what hope looks like to me.
If Hope is a place, it should be here on this beautiful Earth. It should be a place where babies, children, people aren’t smashed under rubble; where an entire population isn’t bombed and murdered while the world cheers it on.
If hope isn’t an emotion, if it’s not faith, if it’s not optimism…well, what the fuck is it?
Hope is desire. Hope is desire. Hope is desire.
Maybe I’ve latched on to the wrong word again, taking “words are powerful” too literally, as if a single word can change everything.
But still,
I choose hope. I choose hope. I choose hope.
Hope in the name of the dead.
Hope in the name of the living.
Hope, because we all deserve better.
Hope, because it’s all we have, maybe.
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