There’s Hope and then there’s hope. Hope, and its inverse, despair, are mostly human emotions, mediated by and complex interplay of neurotransmitters and cognition, peaks and valleys of a fickle and often tempestuous sea that our lives sail across, and from which we can never see the landfalls we are approaching. A disturbing dream, a minor disappointment or victory, or any of a myriad other antecedents, conscious, unconscious, or material, lift us over the waves or drop us into the troughs. Cresting one we celebrate in joy, crashing into the next, burying our bow with green water flooding our decks, we cower in anguish.
Surprisingly I think this may be largely true for every being, however primitive or humble, but for us (and possibly a few other of our big brained cousins) we are made sapiens by our extraordinary meta cognition. We can, while still riding these waves, look out to the horizon, know the storm will pass, and chart a course to a landfall whose harbors we can chart.
“Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it.” “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” Those are the words of Barack and Martin respectively. And while I deeply respect and revere them, and more, appreciate their stalwart defense of looking up, of shaking off despair and disappointment and maintaining Hope, I do not agree that all evidence is to the contrary. I think they are trying to describe this meta hope, not the giddy feeling of hopefulness. The evidence Barack refers to, the darkness Martin sees are these seas of emotion, turning our stomachs and laying us low. But we can look both back to the track we have already taken and ahead to the course we are charting and understand, if not feel, that the actual evidence is that we are nicely making way across this ocean of time; that the new world we steer for will almost certainly be even better than the one we left and that our ship is afloat and moving forward, not sinking as it wallows in a tempest, however scary the wind or waves may be.
This is Hope, ignoring the Oh no! Oh no! Oh nos! of our tumultuous inner lives and looking up and out, using reason and science to study the weather and grab our sextant to navigate a course with the faith that these tools will deliver us to new and better lands, as all evidence has clearly supported. To finally beat this metaphor to death, with some actual actionable and practical advice for the landlubbers among us, if you’re feeling a little queasy and starting to get seasick, keep your eye on the horizon – better yet take the tiller and steer. Fill your mind with data about the shifting wind and waves to understand and predict how the boat will move. Rather than listening to the confusing and contradictory evidence presented, on one hand, by your inner ear and on the other by your eyes, go meta. Your stomach will settle and you will enjoy the ride confident that you will arrive in port, safe and sound. Happy Hope!
HOLLY DAYS 