Hope’s Revenge!
There is a quote I wrote in Magic Marker on an index card and stuck on the fridge, where it stayed for months until the kitchen sun faded the magic right out of those colors.
“Resistance is first of all a matter of principle and a way to live, to make yourself one small republic of unconquered spirit. You hope for results, but you don’t depend on them.” Rebecca Solnit
By the time the index card was little more than a yellowed piece of card stock with vague lettering, I’d memorized the quote. Though memorized doesn’t feel complete. It wasn't just in my mind alongside the Preamble to the Constitution, Lady MacBeth’s “Out, damned spot” monologue, and other static things I’d committed to memory.
Those few words had turned themselves into something more interesting: for me, they turned into the notion that hope is a value we can hold, alongside honesty, kindness, family, and on.
Let’s define our terms here: by hope, I mean a belief that things can be better, which feeds a willingness to make them so.
Values aren’t always easy. If honesty were a walk in the park, we’d be honest all the time and twice on Sundays. If it were a breeze to be kind to everyone, we’d all be little Buddhas on the highway. And family? There’d be a lot of unemployed therapists if family were a piece of cake.
Hope sure isn’t effortless. We find ourselves in a moment - and it is a moment, it is not forever - where the news, and its aftereffects, can thieve our hope. Perhaps you see people around you resigning to the cruelty and corruption, accepting that the good guys will just get plowed over.
Hope, like any value, doesn’t just happen. It is a choice, a discipline that requires regular maintenance.
Did someone share this with you? Welcome!
A few hope practices I’ve come to like:
If you read something good, share that good stuff around! When you read something disheartening, perhaps pause before sharing it. There’s an old line, “Speak only if it would improve upon the silence.” Consider if sharing would improve upon people’s day.
If you’re in a conversation where folks are out-bad-news-ing each other, you could try a gentle redirect to turn the temperature down: "It’s true stuff is tough right now. It’s also true that we have found our way through tough times before and I believe we’ll find our way through them again." If that tact doesn’t feel genuine, find one that does.
Seek out the good stuff. Just making the conscious choice to see goodness blows open our eyes to the sweetness quietly taking place.
From just the last few days:
I heard one of the staffers at the dump say to a truck loaded with leaves and a euphoric dog, “I’ve got a Milkbone just for that pup!”
I saw a car miss a green light because it let two other cars and a postal truck in ahead of it.
My Trader Joe’s bill came to an even $76.00; I was delighted and the cashier turned, grabbed a pack of cheese puffs, tossed it in my bag and said, “Your prize, madam!"
Values aren’t values because they’re easy. They are values because they matter. And when we miss the mark on honesty or kindness, we don’t trash the value and resolve to become dishonest jerkfaces. We try again, and again.
If part of our life’s work is to spend our time as a reflection of our values, any time would be enlarged with more hope occupying it.