No Optimism Required; Hope Is Powerful

"Hope is a practice."

— Mariame Kaba

I describe myself as a "pragmatic optimist", meaning that I know I need to put in the work, I'm willing to accept incremental progress as progress, and I do believe we can move toward something better through our commitment and effort. Optimism is defined by some as a less than useful position because they conceive of it as a belief that you already know the outcome will be positive. I'm not that kind of optimist. I don't wait for the best possible outcome; I work for it. Maybe I'm an optimistic pragmatist instead.

I've been publishing the occasional round-up of poems on a theme. This one is a bit different. I collect quotations, and this collection includes quite a few of those as well as links to some poems. I'm putting together sources about hope in the spirit of the quotation from Jane Goodall and the poem below from Barbara Kingsolver, both of them women whose work and spirit I admire. 

I hope you find inspiration here.

Quotations

"Hope is often misunderstood. People tend to think that it is simply passive wishful thinking: I hope something will happen but I’m not going to do anything about it. This is indeed the opposite of real hope, which requires action and engagement."
— Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope

"Hope is not a wish but an intention."
— Steven Charleston

"...it’s OK not to be optimistic. Buddhist teachings say, you know, feeling that you have to maintain hope can wear you out, so just be present… The biggest gift you can give is to be absolutely present, and when you’re worrying about whether you’re hopeful or hopeless or pessimistic or optimistic, who cares? The main thing is that you’re showing up, that you’re here, and that you’re finding ever more capacity to love this world — because it will not be healed without that. That [is] what is going to unleash our intelligence and our ingenuity and our solidarity for the healing of our world." 

— Joanna Macy in an On Being episode  discovered thanks to this Brain Pickings post on Macy, Rainer Maria Rilke, and mortality

And then there's this:

"Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes — you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It’s the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand. We may not, in fact, know them afterward either, but they matter all the same, and history is full of people whose influence was most powerful after they were gone." 

— Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

— Howard Zinn, "The Optimism of Uncertainty" (2004)

"Hope is an act of defiance against a politics of pessimism and a culture of despair that depends on us not being able to imagine something better than where we are now."
— Rabbi Sharon Brous

“This is my hope: that the recognition of shared fate might cause us to act  as if shared fate is the reality that in fact it is.” 
—Jane Hirshfield

"Life is full of mystery. The mystery is our invitation to let go and to embrace uncertainty with the fullness of our being. This is how hope becomes our bearing. It’s how it becomes our compass in uncertain times." 
—Joe Primo

"We speak of the light of reason. I would speak here of the darkness of the world, and the light of _______. But I don’t know what to call it. Maybe hope. Maybe faith, but not a shaped faith— only, say, a gesture, or a continuum of gestures. But probably it is closer to hope, that is more active, and far messier than faith must be. Faith, as I imagine it, is tensile, and cool, and has no need of words. Hope, I know, is a fighter and a screamer." 
—Mary Oliver, Winter Hours

"Hope is holding a creative tension between what is and what could and should be, and each day doing something to narrow the distance between the two."
— Parker J. Palmer

"ln a century of staggering open questions, hope becomes a calling for those of us who can hold it, for the sake of the world. Hope is distinct, in my mind, from optimism or idealism. It has nothing to do with wishing. It references reality at every turn and reverse truth. It lives open-eyed and wholehearted with the darkness that is woven ineluctably into the light of life and sometimes seems to overcome it. Hope, like every virtue, is a choice that becomes a practice that becomes spiritual muscle memory. It's a renewable resource for moving through life as it is, not as we wish it to be." 
— Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living

"Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Either we have hope within or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.

"Hope is an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more propitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper the hope is."
— Vaclav Havel

Poems

"Hope; An Owner's Manual"
Barbara Kingsolver

Pass your hope like a bad check. You might still have just enough time. To make a deposit.

"For the New Year, 1981"
Denise Levertov

Please take

this grain of a grain of hope

so that mine won’t shrink.

Please share your fragment

so that yours will grow.

Only so, by division,

will hope increase,

"Hope"
Barbara Crooker

A thin drizzle of sun slips through clouds, a strand of hope against the icy odds.

"How to Hope"
Katherine Harer

hope is hokey

imperfect full of stumbling little acts

the way a strand of neighbors standing in the rain

on the shoulder of Highway One American flags

in their hands and homemade signs:

Peace is Patriotic

can make another strand start up

even in the imagination

"Hope (A Zen Perspective)"
Richard Schiffman

Hope is not about some future meadow.
Hope is not a triumphal march toward some brighter,
bloodless field. Neither is it lighting a candle
or cursing the darkness or calling the glass half full.
It is this half-empty tumbler turning cartwheels
above the chasm.  

"There Was a Time I Disdained Hope"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

And isn’t
that what hope
is—a sprout
that grows
when conditions
are poor,
as if to prove

"Thanks, Robert Frost"
David Ray

Do you have hope for the future?
someone asked Robert Frost, toward the end.
Yes, and even for the past, he replied,
that it will turn out to have been all right
for what it was, something we can accept,
mistakes made by the selves we had to be,
not able to be, perhaps, what we wished,
or what looking back half the time it seems
we could so easily have been, or ought...

"Relearning Hope"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Hope was never meant to be trapped,
to be tamed, commodified, it was always
meant to flow through. 

"A Poem on Hope" (video of Berry reading it in an interview with Bill Moyers)
Wendell Berry

Find your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground underfoot.
No place at last is better than the world. The world
is no better than its places. Its places at last
are no better than their people while their people
continue in them. When the people make
dark the light within them, the world darkens.

Somewhat related reading

• We Are the Ones We've Been Waiting For: Poems for Activists and Advocates
• Give Your Power to Truth: What Story Are You Writing for Your Life? 
• Street of Dreams: Can We Live the Martin Luther King, Jr. Way?
• Poetry and Place
• A Rose Amidst the Thorns: Poems about Beauty Balancing Pain
• Bike/Life Lessons Learned 
• What I Stand For
• Showing Up 
• Kindness Matters 
• Thanks + Giving 
• Shared Streets: A Vision 
• Personal Privilege and Biking: It Takes More than a Bike Lane to Start Riding

*Links in book titles are Bookshop.org affiliate links. Go to your local independent bookstore or get the book from the library. The links are here in case you need them. Any proceeds will be donated to nonprofits advancing hope, social justice, and safer streets for all of us.

Living, Every Day

"What are the things you do to make everyday life enjoyable?"

This question in the weekend thread on Ask A Manager, where we can talk about anything but work, sparked a reflection on the many ways I'm able to do just that. 

I have a morning routine that gives me a peaceful start to the day. I write in my journal, read some poetry, and if my schedule allows I do a short yoga practice and/or meditate. But first, I sit on my sofa with my cat on my lap, drink good French Press coffee my sweetheart makes for me, let my brain wake up. I read poetry because it won't ensnare me the way fiction will, and nonfiction so often feels like work or homework. Both of my daughters live far away and I often record a poem for them and send the link if it's online, or a picture of the page in the book I'm reading. If I go too long without doing that I get a "where's the poetry, Mom?" message.

As part of my morning routine I visit grateful.org and respond to the question of the day. The community there is warm and welcoming, and the question always reminds me of my generally great good fortune. I read responses from people who haven't been as fortunate and it's clearly helping them too, as we pause to pay attention the way I'm doing with this question.

An element of the journal—and if you stop reading after this paragraph you've gotten the most important thing I do: As I start each day's pages I set one part of a page apart and head it "Today's delights—" thanks to reading Ross Gay's The Book of Delights*. I enjoy doing some decoration of the spot and use a different color of ink so it stands out. And then I pay attention! Over the course of the day I find what I'm looking for, which is the small delights each day holds. It might be that first cup of fresh, hot coffee; the cat's warmth on my lap and the way he leans into my hand to have his chin skritched; putting together an outfit I really love for the color combination; seeing a deer on the sidewalk in our neighborhood (so far I've been lucky and they haven't jumped the fence to snack on my garden); the social energy of a community event; hearing the deep tones of the windchimes outside my office window when the breeze picks up. Whatever I find delightful, which happens when I pause and pay attention to that happy little zing.

Other things:

I got a walking pad that has made a real difference in my energy level over the course of the day. When I can I also go outside for brief walks between meetings. This isn't skipping work, this is work; the brain needs unscheduled time to process and make new connections. I live in a small neighborhood with a loop street and almost no traffic, which makes it easy to do 2 or 3 loops. If I had a linear street I'd probably pick a landmark as a turnaround point. 

I turn some meetings into walking meetings, too. I live near both a small park and a big park. Walking and listening makes me a more attentive participant than if I sit at my desk with three screens in front of me and plenty of emails awaiting a reply and inviting me to tune out the meeting. I love being in a green space hearing bird calls, seeing ferns and moss, winding along the soft trails.

When I go outside or when I sit at a table I have near a window, I look at the sky. I might watch clouds moving, which I can do right now, puffy white clouds against a blue sky; appreciate the deep blue if that's what I have; decide that all my walking will be inside because it's pouring rain. Whatever it is, the sky is always there and I feel as if I've ignored it more often in the past than I paid attention to it, once I outgrew lying on the lawn and looking up to identify cloud pictures. (A very delightful thing to do that I'm coming back to)

Thanks to my sweetheart I stay stocked up on dark chocolate sea salt truffles. In the evening I eat one, maybe two, for a touch of sweetness at the end of the day.

An important piece of this: I don't tell myself I've been "good" in what I ate and therefore somehow earned the chocolate. Food is enjoyable and I let myself enjoy it without any calorie-counting or nutritional analysis. (I'm fortunate not to have any health conditions that would require me to do this.) Giving up the societally created pressure to have a body that looks a certain way has been very freeing. My body can move and laugh and hug and that's what counts.

I ride my bike or take the bus for most transportation. I chose to (and could afford to) live in a location that lets me do this. I find driving stressful, whereas when I ride my bike I feel joyful and free and arrive happy. On the bus I see the regulars, look at the houses and yards we pass, maybe listen to a podcast. Either way I don't have to worry about finding or paying for a parking spot when I arrive at my destination.

I grow a garden and preserve a lot of food through canning, freezing, and dehydrating. It's such a delight to pull a jar of jam out in midwinter, open it up and smell the raspberries I grew in the summer. I give away much of what I can and it makes me happy to share the bounty.

I love this question. What's your answer? 

*Bookshop.org affiliate link. Go to your local independent bookstore if you can, or get it from your library, but the link is here if you need it.

March Delights

The second day of March gifted me with the perfect poem to capture what seeking out delights offers in each day.

"The Good News" by Thich Nhat Hanh comes my way courtesy of reading poetry every morning. At some point in the early COVID era I found A Year of Being Here, a site at which Phyllis Cole-Dai posted a poem that supports mindfulness every day for three years. Ever since I've been reading each day's poems. It turns these poems into old friends, this one reminding me that I can choose to greet a dandelion as a delight:

From "The Good News":

"The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,
smiling its wondrous smile,
singing the song of eternity."

And then there's the poem by his student Marci Thurston-Shaine, "More Good News".

"You and I are flowers of a tenacious family.
Breathe slowly and deeply,
free of previous occupation."

These poems go so well with March, when dandelions are popping out in our lawn to provide some early spring food for the bees. Such an ordinary, everyday flower, treated with scorn by lawnkeepers who attack it for daring to interrupt their smooth swards. And yet they keep coming back, persistent, blooming.

Other early flowers provide more obvious delights. The cherry plum tree I see looking out of my office window is popping with pink, blooming at a rate I almost feel I should be able to see in real time. In the back yard we have a tree dubbed the "Seuss tree." Its slender, lithe branches rise up and then droop over. We keep the bottom trimmed straight off so the branches don't drag on the small deck. This gives the tree the overall effect of a bowl-shaped haircut, resembling many of Dr. Seuss's classic characters. That tree is popping tiny white flowers, somewhat behind the cherry plum. Spring flowers bring so much delight, just waiting to be noticed.

Each morning I visit sites that bring me new poems, some of which find their way into my themed poetry collections. I'm a bit surprised that I missed "The Good News" when I compiled poems that celebrate the everyday and ordinary in life.

The site grateful.org also makes up part of my morning routine. The question of the day sometimes relates to poems I've already read that morning, or reminds me of a poem I've read in the past. The question always inspires attention, notice, appreciation—all essential elements of finding delights.

One day in March the day's question asked, "When I shift my focus to the extraordinary nature of the ordinary, what do I notice?" My response:

Simply paying attention shifts focus. Thinking of how things came to be, and came to me, shifts focus outward, to a broader awareness and appreciation. So many, many steps, coincidences, choices, decisions, happenstances if that’s a word, natural processes, sunlight and air all aligned and here I am, here we are, here is my afghan and my sofa and the coffee in my cup and the cup and the table. Extraordinary and ordinary, all at once.

Each day's delights are both ordinary and extraordinary.

Related Reading

• A Year of Poems: March
• Walking in March: Of Woods and Work
• Reruns: March Posts Worth Revisiting
• January Delights
• February Delights
• Bike Delights