How to hold onto hope

Every other photo on my phone now shows the tree in the garden. It is looking particularly spectacular. The rest of the photos are of the cat.

I know from the last two years of the cherry tree to expect two weeks of glorious colours. This is followed by a sudden shrugging off of leaves onto the ground. It no longer takes me by surprise, but it still feels sad waking up to only bare branches.

Recent events can feel a bit like waking up to bare tree branches: the US election, COP29 in Azerbaijan, escalating conflict in the Middle East and Ukraine, floods in Valencia, it goes on.

How do we stay true to the difficulties in the world around us, while holding onto hope? The ‘how to hope’ question follows me around in conversations about the work I do. I don’t always like the question. It can feel like being asked for a shortcut or a loophole out of the pain of reality. But I also get it. Pain and difficulty can push us towards despair, and, in the midst of pain, hope is an urgent tool of resistance.

I haven’t ‘solved’ how to hold onto hope, but it’s something I’ve thought about a lot since first experiencing climate grief. Anna said recently one of the things I’d taught her is”to keep being proactive and finding a way forward”. It meant a lot to me, because it feels hard-fought-for. It’s a decision to live hopefully.

A recipe for holding onto hope:

(1) Allow for both radical evil and radical goodness

One of the things that threatens our sense of hope is encountering something that shakes the boundaries of our worldview. When Russia invaded Ukraine, it challenged an implicit assumption for many: that war couldn’t return to Europe. This challenge can shock us and make our worldview more pessimistic.

Many of us have a tacit understanding of safety that, while comforting, isn’t particularly rooted in anything. As new events unfold, we continually update the parameters we operate within. But this can mean that we find ourselves buffeted and thrown about.

If you can reckon with both the extent of evil, which is greater than you probably think, as well as the extent of goodness, which is greater than you probably think – you can stay open to a wider scope of possibility, without it shaking your internal self-understanding.

(2) Consider that the weather is a great bluffer

We are individual people in complex, changeable systems. Rather than feel like this is overwhelming, treat it as a reminder that we don’t have the knowledge to really know where we find ourselves. It’s as arrogant to believe that everything is beyond our reach as it is to think it’s all within our reach. Despair is not more rational than hope.

As the famous letter by E.B White goes:

"Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly... 

..as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. 

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.”

(3) Recover your sense of agency

At any point, you can see something wrong with the world, decide it doesn’t have to be this way, and throw your life behind it.

If life events mean you’ve lost your sense of cause + effect, start small. Practice thinking about all the ways your life is impacted by the actions of others. Invert this to reclaim your ownership of the influence you exert on the lives of others. Pick a small goal, set it as an intention, and make it happen.

Everything you see around you is a result of the intentions and tenacity of the people who have gone before you. The buses, the library, the screen you’re reading this on. The world is a museum of passion projects. Find what moves you and be moved. It’s all to play for.

(4) Get content with doing things for their own sake

It’s easy to question whether something will really ‘make a difference’. Trying to quantify the outcomes of our actions is futile. It’s statistically probable that you can go your whole life voting in elections in which your single vote is not once decisive in determining the outcome. I don’t think this means you shouldn’t vote – it just means that a pure measure of effectiveness is a poor basis for doing so. Embrace your sense of those things in life that have inherent worth and do them for their own sake.

Just because you can’t do everything, doesn’t mean you should do nothing. In fact, imagine the weight and impossibility if you could. Let limitations spark your creativity and enjoy the doing of something for the experience of its being something.

(5) Believe that nothing is irredeemable

I often return to “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:5.

The sun sets only to rise again, plants appear to die only to blossom again in the spring. There is life the other side of death; Jesus is the guarantor of creation’s integrity. Or, in Dorothy Day’s words “there is always the fact of the Fall, as well as the fact of our Redemption“.

Nothing is wasted in nature or in love.

And, for the times you feel helpless or hopeless…

Give and receive the gift of being listened to

Get someone to really listen, and only listen. Agree it with them. Set a timer of a few minutes to ten minutes. They can thank you for sharing and acknowledge what has been shared, but they cannot react or respond. Honestly, there’s nothing better.