Choosing Hope (when times are tough)

One of my inspiring clients said “I choose happy” yesterday.  She is going to actively work on releasing past hurts and sadness, to move towards happiness.

I love this.  We often think of happy, fulfilled, content, hopeful, even relaxed as states that will just happen to us if we can just fix something, or if something will stop. We are passive in the process (other than focusing on the problems, or our own shortcomings)

But the reality is that we can be active in inviting these states into our lives.  And keep chipping away at how our circumstances impact us. That’s not to say, difficulty won’t overwhelm us or that we should swat it away.  We need to sit with distress and discomfort at times to process it.  But we can simultaneously take small actions to mitigate its impact so that it doesn’t obliterate or paralyse us.

On a similar theme, I am actively choosing hope this year – with my intentions for 2025, it is what I am inviting in anew (refresher of this process here).

Even though I’m generally a glass half full person, when it comes to the world and humanity I’ve been struggling to find any optimism.  But I’ve become fascinated with the words of Nick Cave (my current obsession!), particularly around hope.

My first thought can be to rail against something like this – that telling ourselves that everything will be ok is not just naïve but dangerous because it means that we’re not fighting the fight that needs to be fought.

But this idea of hope seems different and has resonated so strongly with me, I’m going to actively try it in 2025.  Using it as a means to stay engaged and energised rather than dialling out or burying my head because it’s just too much. The idea of hope as warrior-like defiance, courageous and ingenious is right up my street and a long way from naivety and surrender.

I’ll be honest, I don’t quite know how to do this in practice, but I’m going to give it a go and I’ll keep you posted.  My first stop is going to be to read The Spirit of Hope by Byung-Chul Han.

“Hopefulness is not a neutral position…it is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism.”

“Hope is an emotional temper that emboldens the heart to be active, it is a condition, a mood, an aura of being. It is a feat of the imagination, both courageous and ingenious, a vitality that inspires us to take innovative action to defend the world. Hope is essential to our survival and our flourishing.
We achieve this vitality of spirit by rejecting the relentless promotion of despair and opening our eyes to the beauty of things, however imperilled, degraded, or difficult to love the world may appear to be. We try to view the world not as it is packaged, presented and sold to us but as we imagine it could be. We do not look away from the world, we look directly at it and allow the spirit of hope – the necessary driver of change – to inspire us to action.”

“Hope and optimism can be different, almost opposing, forces. Hope rises out of known suffering and is the defiant and dissenting spark that refuses to be extinguished. Optimism, on the other hand, can be the denial of that suffering, a fear of facing the darkness, a lack of awareness, a kind of blindness to the actual. Hope is wised-up and disobedient.”