The Hope We Create

What is happening? Am I…hope-scrolling? This is what I kept asking myself this week. Like many people, I am more prone to doom-scrolling these days. But as the surprisingly pro-democracy results of the U.S. midterm elections roll in, I find myself refreshing my feeds to watch semi-obsessively as the pieces come together. There have been some heartbreaks and scares, no doubt, but mostly this is not a train wreck with fascism. It is nice to watch not-a-train-wreck sometimes. And dare I say, I am feeling a little more hopeful about humanity on the whole.

In a world where optimism often seems naive and happiness suspect, or at least short-lived, hope is still–and all the more–essential. As we know from Brené Brown:

“…hope is not an emotion. Hope is a cognitive, behavioral process that we learn when we experience adversity, when we have relationships that are trustworthy, when people have faith in our ability to get out of a jam…Hope is function of struggle.”

And I see hope as inherently creative.

Hope is the ability to imagine that the next moment might be different than this one, that tomorrow will not be a repeat of today. And hope can empower us to participate in making it so. To hope is to exercise creativity. Hope is key for any of us who wish to make things and share them. In turn, the making and sharing often conjure hope in us and others to keep us going.

Create Dangerously: The Power and Responsibility of the Artist by Albert Camus

I picked this book up at the Poets Bookshop in Dallas last week. The last paragraph left me in tears and inspired today’s newsletter. I leave you with it now:

“Some will say that such hope is carried by a nation, others by a person. But I believe quite the reverse: hope is awakened, given life, sustained, by the millions of individuals whose deeds and actions, every day, break down borders and refute the worst moments in history, to allow the truth––which is always in danger––to shine brightly, even if only fleetingly, the truth, which every individual builds for us all, created out of suffering and joy.

-Albert Camus (from “Create Dangerously: The Power and Responsibility of the Artist)

May we remember that we are each one of millions (billions) who can break down borders, refute the worst moments of history, build up the truth, and create our own hope–from suffering and from joy.

Here’s to hoping. It’s what we humans do after all.

“All about a human being is, it’s a great big hoping machine.”—Woody Guthrie