It is only through hope that we can bring the myriad thoughts somersaulting inside our minds into the light and marshal some act that will ignite change. Without hope, we skulk in the dark, unaware that necessary change is slipping out of our grasp.
The darkness is filled with nightmarish truths of pandemics, global warming, soaring medical costs, stolen privacy, declining freedoms and combative justice played out on streets of violence, anger and indifference.
Light fades when we grasp the fact that it is life itself that is in danger and that it is up to us to make sure it prevails. Blindly, we grope for change.
Before you join in the fight to spark revolutionary change, decide whether you want to accept a ticket to watch the spectacle or accept a role in the performance. If we select a seat in the audience, we can sit silently with crossed legs, folded arms and nodding heads as the evolving drama, comedy or mystery unfolds in front of us.
We boo the players that fail to represent us, forget their lines or alter the ending. Yet, if we fail to accept any responsibility for the prose or the proceedings of the players, have we not acquiesced to each scene?
Unless we step on stage, disrupt the supposed parity and become part of the play, we cannot hope to end false hope or foster change. There is scarcely an expectation that the play will improve without external input. If we want to see change, we must be awakened, attentive and prepared to seize it even if it only briefly flickers before us.
Right this very moment you’re experiencing that precious, miraculous state of existence called life. Don’t just sit back and watch the world go by. Get involved. You have the opportunity for so much more if you only seize opportunity and run with it.
Don’t be troubled that you do not know enough. Be afraid of not learning more.
The true quest for hope and change is neither onstage where temptation and anxiety, spotlighted as fortune or fame, blind our vision. Neither is Hope a spectator with no stake in still being on stage when the curtain falls.
Hope seeks change in the shadows, backstage and in the rooms where the play is written and refined. That is where you will find the dreamers, the visionaries, the fresh open minds with unsullied spirits that are envisioning things we have yet to imagine.
Nurture them. They may hold the map to new beginnings where embryonic ideologies wait to be birthed.
Hope encourages us to unearth values that hold the power to mend the torn fabric of truth and trust that have punched gaping holes in justice. We are unable to see the complete picture, know the scope of the problem and the tasks that lie before us even though It is likely that the answers are scattered and hidden among the same behavior and endeavors that created the problems in the first place.
The role of some participants is to challenge the this-is-how-it-should-be-done-because-this-is-how-it-has-always-been-done paradigm. Others are content to believe things run smoothly when they give up control—when they allow events to happen instead of making them happen.
The hope we are looking for demands action; it is not a yellow smiley face telling us things are getting better. True hope lets us imagine that if we face reality without any preconceived ideas of how things must work, we can take advantage of this uncertainty to envision how the world could work better.
While critical thinking is an important tool in making change, if hope is not part of the equation, the thinker becomes cynical. The counterpart is that if critical thinking is not blended with hope, thinkers are gullible. We must reconcile between the ideal and the real by cultivating the right balance of critical thinking and hope.
As we have often observed, Americans are good at responding to crisis. However too often, after the crisis subsides, they take their thoughts home to revel in peace and live happily ever after – until the next crisis appears.
Too few actually hang around to work through the details and fully realize not only what has been accomplished, but the ongoing impact the crisis continues to have on society. Attempts to raise consciousness, disprove philosophies and seize opportunities for cultural and economic restructuring are left to flounder and fade, thwarting new hope and warping social change.
Without a good fight, your chances for triumph are slammed. The winner’s path demands an open-mind that acknowledges your fears, anger, grief, guilt and feelings of isolation.
Only when you have set boundaries on what you are willing to do without compromising your integrity should you move onward.
Even when victory is within your reach, know it is not a destination but the starting line to recommit and continue to nourish the ideals that have guided you. It is not the time to quit, but a chance to think of what else could possibly happen and speculate on where it will lead in time.
Paradoxically, you must be simultaneously realistic and unrealistic. You must be realistic in seeing how things really are and unrealistic in imagining all possibilities no matter how implausible they appear. The secret is to stay grounded in reality but refuse to be limited by it.
Live as though every positive thing you do will trigger a chain reaction, the culmination of which is beyond imagination. Life can work like that when you believe without a doubt that you can do it.
We are currently going through an unprecedented time where we must be motivated by hope because the best option open to us is change.
Covid-19 sideswiped the global community and sent it careening across our mundane existence, rousing long buried moral principles, ethics, beliefs, values and standards of behavior that, when we finally right ourselves, have the power to restore our vanishing humanity.
Perhaps God became weary of hearing us say we want change as we tell ourselves there is nothing we can do about it. Weary of our arrogance, self-importance and greed, He has shown us that an invisible strand of RNA can make the whole world come to a standstill and almost instantly refocus our lives.
When each of us must relinquish that which we most treasure, most rely on, what defines us, we are forced to look inward and examine who we really are.
What do we value? What do we cling to that is not serving us? What do we practice that is in our selfish interest that keeps us from reaching out, sharing, sacrificing and offering our love to our brothers and sisters?
When contentious primary elections that have divided families and changed principled individuals into scheming vipers are canceled, sports events that have consumed our leisure cease, restaurants, theaters and churches are shuttered for the good of the many, we must ask ourselves how essential to life and health were they in the first place. Did we give them homage above and beyond their significance?
The invasion of an unknown Virus exposed the human toll of the marginalized, mistreated, those cheated of living with dignity and those that survive by numbing their pain. The pandemic showcased the inequities in health, affluence, privilege, age, race, sex, religion and politics.
Our new normal emphasizes the normalization of generational, moral failures and crimes that have now become so mundane that they barely merit the concern or interest of journalists or raise alarm in jaded communities and neighborhoods.
Our current theories cannot really capture or explain the change that we must now discover. Our situation demands a new solution developed with new data, new perspective and a new understanding of equity, justice and fairness.
We will need completely new semantics, revolutionary vision and unprecedented insight simply to make sense of what the pandemic wrought.
Hope must burn in us, kindling a longing for justice that will move us outward and forward.
Will you buy a ticket and wait for the curtain to fall or will you join the cast, working together to prosper?
The temptation to give up is strongest just before victory. Hold on to the belief that whatever happens always happens on time. Your life is crowded with magnificent possibilities.
Make them happen. Make them yours.
We cannot become what we want to be by remaining what we are. ~Max Depree