pushing a baby panda
"This is how I want to journey through this time of increasing uncertainty. Groundless, hopeless, insecure, patient, clear and together," writes the author Margaret Wheatley.
Hopeless? Really? Because there is also this: "Being against hope is like being in favor of pushing baby pandas off cliff tops." (Oliver Burkeman)
We don't want to hear it. We live in a hope-filled world. We've been told, No one should ever give up hope. We want to believe that hope is what guides us through difficult times.
But it doesn't. Not really. Hope holds us prisoner. We hold out and hold on for things to become better. Some time in the future. With hope, I surrender agency. I outsource responsibility.
Hope is in fact a subtle form of wanting. I l want things to be different than they are right now. I have a destination in mind. It is hope that keeps me unhappy while I wait for better circumstances.
The paradox: It's only when hope fades that I experience a sense of release. The task becomes clear. To accept what is; to show up for what's asked. Says the author Derrick Jensen: "A wonderful thing happens when you give up on hope, which is that you realize you never needed it in the first place… you become very dangerous indeed."
Without hope, I am free. Without hope I can embrace reality clearly. I can become fully curious, intentional, active and engaged. I can love reality for what it offers.
Research suggests that hope makes people feel worse. It's as if a pause button has been placed on us. We can't move on. Because...there is still hope. And we actually experience fear. Anytime we hope for a certain outcome, we invite expectation, and therefore fear that we may get terribly disappointed.
To set ourselves free then. Hopelessness is not the opposite of hope. Rather, fear is. Hopelessness is free of fear. Free of wanting, hopelessness is peace.
And for the research:
Margaret Wheatley writes powerfully about her journey into hopelessness in this moving Lion's Roar piece. It actually offers a luminescent definition of hope that is the essence of hopelessness, by the dissent and last President of Czechoslovakia Vaclav Havel: "Hope is a dimension of the soul, an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizon. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.”
How does this perspective sit with you? What does it possibly open?
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