Hopefulness Wins over Despair

Motivational and inspirational quotes – pain is real but so is hope

Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Some say these are personality traits, shaped by nature and nurture. However, I think there is something even more fundamental than what comes to us from mum, dad, school and society and that is the way of life we choose. Explore and contemplate the sources from which hopefulness can emerge, and win over despair, in this thoughtful article from Rev. Christopher Page.

Let’s Start with Honesty and Realism

There is no denying that there is pain, suffering, hopelessness and despair in our world and in ourselves. We see pain and tragedy around us every day. It can be awful when it touches our own lives. We can’t ignore the powers that are beyond our own ability to control or even endure. Honesty and realism demand that we recognize that. But I don’t want to wake each morning with that despair weighing on me. How can we continue to be Hopeful?

Is Free Will enough?

For centuries there have been discussions and arguments about “free will”. The question always focuses on how much personal power we have to make changes in our lives. Let’s go to the source of all knowledge, Google!!. The Brittanica site puts it this way:

Free will, in humans, is the power to make decisions or perform actions independently of any prior event or state of the universe. Arguments for free will are based on the common assumption of individual moral responsibility, among other considerations.

I am a free-will believer. Because of experience and observation in my 72 years have opened my eyes and my mind to the fact that people can and do change. It’s not easy and it doesn’t always happen. But when there is one fundamental ingredient it can. And that is Hopefulness.

Is Optimism the same as Hopefulness?

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the confidence that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. And it can change my life to be more meaningful and purposeful.

One of the great quotes on hopefulness comes from Vaclav Havel who was a statesman, author, poet, playwright, and dissident. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia and in 1993 became the first democratically elected president of the Czech Republic after the fall of communism. He wrote:

I am not an optimist, because I am not sure everything ends well. Nor am I a pessimist, because I am not sure that everything ends badly. I just carry hope in my heart. Hope is the feeling that life and work have a meaning. You either have it or you don’t, regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you. Life without hope is an empty, boring, and useless life. I cannot imagine that I could strive for something if I did not carry hope in me. I am thankful to God for this gift. It is as big as life itself.  -Vaclav Havel

Your life choices can reflect your hopes, not your fears, past events nor your inherited DNA. There are many real life examples. Why not you?

Hope, Courage and Resilience

Many writers inform our daily lives about hope and courage.

Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible. Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming of suffering. – Helen Keller*

Hope calls for courage. We can be fearful or angry at the way things are. But hopefulness brings a peculiar form of gratitude, thankfulness even beauty and creativity into our lives. I am going to pause while you re-read. Hope calls for courage. We can be fearful or angry at the way things are. But hopefulness brings a peculiar form of gratitude, thankfulness even beauty and creativity into our lives. We can move beyond fear and anger. Bringing gratitude, thankfulness, beauty and creativity into our lives.

*Emily Dickinson’s wonderful poem, “Hope”. Here , quoted in full:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

 

And sweetest – on the Gale – is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm –

 

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet – never – in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of me.

But hopefulness is fragile. In the 1992 film “Scent of a Woman” the Al Pacino character says:

“…there is nothing like the sight of an amputated spirit. There’s no prosthetic for that”.

Hopes can be easily dashed

To return to Vaclav Havel’s words, hope is the feeling that life and work have a meaning. We can search for the meaning of life; turn over every stone. Or we can choose to be hopeful and embrace meaning and purpose when and wherever we see it. Some say, “you can be whatever you want to be…” No, you can’t! Hope is not wishful thinking, Nor is it blind faith. It requires reflection, intuition and reasonableness.

*St Paul’s words:

Hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Therefore we can rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation and continue steadfastly in prayer – St Paul

That’s more realist. We are surrounded by goodness, beauty, and love and as a statement of faith, it is hope that enables us to see it, feel it, and live into it.

The Catholic activist Dorothy Day experienced it like this:

When Dorothy Day, an atheist and communist at the time, became pregnant she was so overcome by the beauty of bearing a new living being inside her she converted to Christianity. Why? “Because I had to give thanks to someone,” she said. God is the One to whom we render our Thanks

Resilience and Hopefulness

I think resilience comes from hopefulness and hope is nurtured by our willingness to change. Many have misused *Charles Darwin’s use of the concept of survival of the fittest. More accurate are his words:

……It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change – Charles Darwin

There is pain, suffering, hopelessness and despair in our world and in ourselves. Pain and tragedy is around us every day. It can be awful when it touches our own lives. There are powers that are beyond our own ability to control or even endure. We recognize honesty and realism.  But I don’t wake each morning with that despair weighing on me. I am hopeful and that means I continue to cultivate the ability to be flexible,  adaptable  , coherent,  energetic,  enthusiastic and reflective

And help is there. Again, the words of St Paul:

….my blessing for you is that the God of hope will fill you with joy and peace and you will abound with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit – St Paul

It’s all about being able to overcome the unexpected. To thrive and flourish. In times of uncertainty. And not to live a life haunted by the past or daunted by the future. That wise and wonderful woman Heller Keller hits it on the head when she writes:

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us – Helen Keller

So, hopefulness is the courage and resilience to see a new reality, even if it is not what the voices around you imagined for you. Or even what you imagined you should have or be. Hope is not wishful thinking. It is the conviction that even faced with disappointment or despair or death, nor anything in our lives, we are more than conquerors*. Conquerors through God / Jesus / love / the divine / the sacred or even life itself. Because we have nurtured hope deep within ourselves,

Rev Dr Christopher Page is an ordained Uniting Church Minister. He provides Progressive Christian ministry at the Stonnington Community Uniting Church in East Malvern.

More information

# This article first published in the Inspire November 2024 Newsletter. Edited and reproduced with permission

*Helen Keller was an American author, disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer. ….she lost her sight and her hearing after a bout of illness when she was 19 months old. (1880-1968) (Wikipedia)