Hope
The concept of hope gives me some challenges. I describe myself as a cheerful pessimist: I plan for the worst, but I remember to rejoice if it doesn't happen. I'm also a worrier, which is likely what keeps me planning for the worst to happen. Always have a back-up plan! When I travel internationally, I make sure I have the address and contact info of the Canadian embassy nearest where I'll be, and I keep photocopies of my passport's main page and my credit card in my shoe, between the orthotic and the sole, in case I get mugged and lose my backpack. I have ICE "in case of emergency, contact" on paper in my back pocket, in case the cellphone I use as my camera is broken or stolen and I'm unconscious. You get the picture! As I write this at the end of July 2023, I'm successfully back from a wonderful trip to Iceland (on my bucket list for 40 years, and I finally got there). I didn't need the embassy or lose my belongings, but my printing off all our vouchers and keeping a file folder of all our travel info proved necessary on several occasions. And the tensor bandage in my backpack came in handy when I wrenched my right thumb and needed to immobilize it. So I'm happy I was prepared, and I rejoice that nothing awful happened!
I suppose my main connection to "hope" as a concept is that I hope I won't have to use all my backup plans. Which doesn't feel very hopeful!
Every November in the Christian season of Advent, the first Sunday is focused on hope, the hope of a new/renewed relationship between God and the world, the hope of good news to all people. And I tend to berate myself for not feeling the more emotionally positive kind of hope that I assume other people have and can't quite manage myself. I know I shouldn't berate myself, but I find myself going there.
On Klaatu's album Hope (1977), the last track is a song also called "Hope," and it's lovely. It's rather sentimental (though I have wondered if that's tinged with irony because of the Politzania sections of the album), and perhaps it cemented my notion of how I was supposed to feel when I felt hope:
Hope is like a lighthouse keeper's beam
Hope the master cobbler of our dreams
For Hope believes in desert streams
The mightiest of stars
The microcosm in a jar
Vast or small they all revolve on Hope
Hope the guardian angel of the dove
Hope a gift of guidance from above
For Hope is the heart in mother's love
No plans could be conceived
No ships could fare the seas
For there would be no courage were it not for Hope
(http://www.klaatu.org/lyrics/hope_lyrics.html)
That's all very future-focused and positive. I stoically continue doing my best to live a sustainable lifestyle even though I don't feel hopeful about climate crisis. I certainly conceive lots of plans without having John Woloschuk's "sunrise in our minds" version of hope! And I think I have courage, at least some. So that version of "hope" I find challenging.
However, a couple of days ago I was reading Akwaeke Emezi's Bitter, the prequel to Pet, and I was floored by an early passage on hope. This is going to change how I think about hope and how I interact with myself emotionally about it--so, a big "thank you" to Emezi! I won't copy the whole passage out, being respectful of copyright, but here are a couple of key quotations. Bitter tells Aloe that "Hope is a waste of fucking time" because the world is dangerous, especially for girls, and you can't keep everyone safe (41). Aloe responds, "hope is not a waste of time. Hope is a discipline" (page 42 in the 2022 hardcover edition, and suitably the answer to life, the universe, and everything). Bitter as an artist knows about discipline: "she knew about rigor and how you had to practice and practice and practice until you carried it with you in your bones. She'd never thought of hope like that--as something serious and deliberate instead of something wishful and desperate" (42).
I love this idea, and I'll take a while to let it sit inside me. Serious and deliberate I can do, especially as a yoga practitioner; rigour and practice are familiar to me as a scholar. From Bible study over the years, I've learned to think of faith as a verb (as it can be in Greek, πιστεύειν, to trust), something we do, not something we have or feel or believe, and in the New Testament faith doesn't mean non-rational certainty. Now I plan to work on rethinking hope. In English, "hope" can easily be a noun or a verb, but the construction "I hope that..." can work in a number of different ways/actions: "I hope you're not going to eat that last slice of cake!" or "I hope the weather will be good on Tuesday" or "I hope you can come to lunch with us." Each of these feels somewhat provisional and weak--a wish rather than an expectation. But if hope is a discipline, as Emezi suggests, then it involves strength and expectation. And that feels more like trusting that with God's help we can change ourselves and our world.
Maybe living in a way that's both faithing and hoping will make me into an optimist. I don't know...I'll keep making backup plans, I suspect. But perhaps I can be an organized and well prepared optimist?