==
“What followed then was what invariably follows in the wake of every tortured consciousness. From what it dreads or hates, yet knows or feels to be unescapable, it takes refuge in that which may be hoped for – or at least imagined.”
Theodore Dreiser
==
“The road back to hope, to a new sense of place, is through the common spaces of our dreams.”
Teresa Hines
==
Search “hope” on my blog and you will get 24 pieces with Hope in its title and 760 pieces with hope somewhere within the piece. I am an unabashed Hope supporter as a proclaimed “cynical optimist.” So when Michele Obama said “hope is making a comeback” I certainly agreed.
Hope never really goes away, it just gets smothered if not suffocated by “realist,” “pragmatic” and the narratives of darkness and despair. The world does everything it can to strip away the value of hope.
The true challenge to hope is that the hopeful are pointed to as the ‘strange ones’ with unrealistic thoughts. It can even be suggested they have impossible thoughts. That’s absurd. Society demands hope and demands the civility to interact with strangers without holding their strangeness, or hope, against them and without forcing them to surrender or their strangeness … or hope. In fact, a healthy society permits people to maintain the traits that have made them hopeful. This means a true community is one with the ability to live with differences let alone let everyone benefit from it.
Which leads me to suggest hope does not come easily and certainly, or rarely, under its own impetus.
Hope demands some negotiated common interests. Hope needs a community which inevitably creates a safe haven of shared worries, shared anxieties, and even some shared unhappiness if not shared cynicism or skepticism. I could even argue those things anchor a community so that a thriving community can build shared hope, shared progress and shared prosperity upon that foundation. Yeah. The road back to hope is through a common space of dreams.
Which leads me to suggest dreams pave the path for hope.
Pragmatic desires undermine hope for progress. What I mean by that is hope for progress is never a matter of evidence nor is it a matter of some tangible objective. It is usually a coalescing of dreams turned into action (or actions). That said. Nothing is easier than to join all the cynics and skeptics together around a question which can be settled, theoretically, empirically. The world does not work that way. It cannot. The entire concept of progress is strewn with uneven bricks of evidence. And even in their unevenness they can offer glimpses of what could be, and what can be. They offer glimpses of hope. In their imperfection they pave the way for Hope. Unfortunately, that unevenness can also suggest a lack of universalism. It can suggest someone can step forward and other cannot (or will not). They suggest someone’s dreams are possible and some others are impossible. That suggestion is wrong. Progress is more a matter of changing direction and rather than thinking of progress as directed to a particular goal we should think of progress as a hopscotch from an uncomfortable situation to a less constrained situation which permits dreams to find a more comfortable space. Universal progress is a vague, if not impossible, objective. And that is where hope gets screwed. The promise of progress is an easier objective; if not easier promise. Its transactional, its pragmatic, and its small. Progress is not finite, it’s not ‘from A to B’, it’s not a straight line. That said. A symptom of lack of progress is a feeling of trauma, an infection, a pain. A symptom of lack of progress is a waning Hope.
Which leads me to Hope demands perspectives on, and from, many things.
Remember, hope is neither linear or transactional. This is important because when in a finite game, where the end is the objective, it is almost impossible to keep broad perspective or see beyond “that is not possible.” Hope demands one embrace at least some aspect of ‘anything is possible.’ As I have said before, moving from impossible to possible is progress. We should make it a vision. A mission. A logic. A technology of the mind. A flag. A war cry. A challenge. A hope. A strength. A bond. A promise. A map. A beginning. A talisman. A tattoo as something you truly believe in something. Anything is possible is actually about progress, not some specific objective or outcome. Anything is possible is at the soul of Hope. And it is making a comeback. Ponder.