The past couple of weeks have had some really bleak moments. Ive swung back and forth on a moment-to-moment basis hearing and reading reports on justice and injustice, empowerment and the corruption and misuse of power, hope and hopelessness. And I kept looking for hope. As if that hope would save me from myself, or from the terror and grief that can paralyze even the most devoted when it appears as if the world has gone mad and we all need to run to the hills and escape the senseless deconstruction of an evolving society. Except I live in the hills--well, okay, the mountains--and here is where I would run to if I did not already live in a microcosm of perceived sustainability and strong community. And the hope was hard to find. Id grasp at a piece of news that inspired me and desperately share it with others--Look! Transparent solar panels. Look! A county in Michigan proved the resistance DOES matter! Look, look, look... until I could not look anymore except inside myself and my own hypocrisy and blind need for another dose of hope. So I gave it up. The night before last, in tears over the unkind words of a stranger that really should not have affected me like they did, I gave it up. I recalled Pema Chodrons words and decided that it was time to abandon hope and allow the present moment to simply be what it was: bleak, frustrating, agonizing, awful. Yesterday was still hard, without hope to grasp. But then it began to improve. I noticed the sky more often, and the scent of evergreens next to the post office, and all the small things there are to be grateful for, letting go of the bigger picture for a few minutes at a time and settling into the deep presence of the now. Bereavement is a hope-free zone. And taking time to simply mourn, to realize the reality is both chilling and as warm as the fire I built with kindling picked up on Thanksgiving, gave me room to begin to recover. I miss my dad in moments like that one, but missing him is not about hoping he was here. I am too deeply aware of the reality of his absence. But when I laughed, later on, at a joke that reminded me of his, it felt less like a fixation and more like appreciation. And that fills me in ways that hope cannot. Scratch the surface of our hope-fixated culture and you discover The Shawshank Redemption lied to us: sometimes, giving up hope sets you free. John Ptacek, a US author, writes of finding meaning through hopelessness after his wifes terminal cancer diagnosis: Time spent hoping for happier days is time spent turning away from life. Derrick Jensen, an environmental campaigner, believes hope makes activism less effective since it involves placing faith in someone or something else to make things better, instead of doing whats needed yourself: A wonderful thing happens when you give up on hope, which is that you realise you never needed it in the first place… you become very dangerous indeed to those in power. The Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön proposes a new fridge magnet: Abandon hope. It sounds like a grim joke. After all, if you dont have hope, whats left? I suspect shed answer: reality. In other words, everything. theguardian/lifeandstyle/2014/apr/12/change-your-life-case-against-hope
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 16:05:37 +0000