Is Hope all there is? What can it do for us?*

The problem of ‘Happy’

In the weeks before Christmas just past, when I was writing greetings cards to the many friends we haven’t seen or communicated with regularly or recently,  it felt more appropriate to wish them hope than happiness…. Indeed is it ever right to  assume happiness is uppermost in the minds of far-flung friends? After such a year, who knows what might have happened in their lives? Floods, fires, and hurricanes are commoner, Covid and its consequences lurks throughout the world.

Hope fitted better. Even though, or possibly because, I found myself dragged down by the dark damp weather, and the short days, into a feeling of hopelessness. I’ve  travelled to South Africa and the USA, and several European countries, but never to any that were politically dangerous or thoroughly disorganised.  I’ve lived in this country, where I was born, all my life, (except for a few months in Canada). It was a good place to grow up and a good place to raise children – or it appeared to be. What is happening here now, when peaceful protest might become criminalised? When desperate people might be sent back into the sea if they arrive alive on our beaches in fragile rubber boats? Is this exaggerated reporting? It is not.

And adding that Covid shows no signs of disappearing any time soon, how could we simply wish each other ‘Happy’ Christmas or New Year, as if this ill-defined feeling of ‘happiness’ should rest upon them, no matter what? Christmas and New Year, increasingly tied into expectation, festivities on a grand scale, sumptuous food, flowing drink, presents, treats, socialising, the works, supposedly creating happiness?  Without these, wouldn’t most people feel resentful, without reason to be ‘happy’? Maybe they ‘shouldn’t’ but it’s hard to have your pleasures taken away – two years running – (or so the media say). What was that song, long ago? ‘Wishing and hoping’?

So, our cards wished our far-flung friends ‘All best for a hopeful New Year’.  

 Can Hope replace Happiness? Might Hope even put Happiness back in our hearts?

Hope implies looking forwards towards a better time, rather than backwards to an imagined expectation.

Hope involves setting achievable ‘goals’, available and achievable to all, not only to those who already have the resources.

Hope is realised when we all work towards creating a more liveable world for everyone

Hope includes adopting a mindset which accepts the ‘other’ whoever they are, whatever ‘minority’, religion, ethnicity, and listening to opposing viewpoints, and responding with personal restraint to ideas we personally may not agree with.

Hope must use facts, in another word, truth, rather than fudges and lies – or it is not hope but a sop or a fantasy.

Whatever else, Hope can’t be used as a trope or a meme. It is a word of action, or it is meaningless.  Hope creates travelling companions such as compassion, kindness, or joy, each of these relying on hope to initiate the effort involved.  Hope works collaboratively, and brings light into a situation.  

With hope, real life may be calling us to make good things happen. 

(By the way, a happy peaceful Christmas & New Year was held here, somewhat scaled down & using Zoom… and I am hoping to publish a selection of short stories soon…watch the News page…)

*A couple of thoughts about ‘hope’, from writers long ago:

Psalm 119:116

Sustain me as You promised, that I may live; let me not be ashamed of my hope…

Romans 5 v 5

And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Perfectionism: the enemy of contentment

Perfectionism, according to writer Anne Lamott in her Bird by Bird (a book beloved of many writers) is ‘the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people … a mean, frozen form of idealism … while messes are the artist’s true friend …’

Perfect Day: in a green and pleasant land?  

 

Lamott’s idea is very close to Anthony Storr’s, in his book The Dynamics of Creation, (published in the 1970s) which I read in the mid-1980s and it became a ‘bible’ to me for a while.  Storr explains how the artist, encountering the messiness of human life, sorts it into making sense, and a useful statement, by pattern-making. Non-creatives, he claims, merely hate mess. They want only to clear it up, and tidy it away. Some non-creatives will even solve their angst and desire to clear it up by ‘acting out …’, usually destructively, sometimes violently.  Creatives look at, or into, mess, consider it, begin playing around with ideas about how to make something out of it, and end up with a piece of art …

Makes sense?

Though it’s hard to explain the process … writing, painting … creation is a process, and the raw materials are our experiences of the world … experts in neurology or psychology might try to analyse it, but when taken to pieces, that’s what anything becomes – pieces. The jigsaw must be put together to make sense. The artist is sorting, then putting stuff together.

The most obvious in my experience is the poetry I made from the painful end of a relationship – some of it even humorous. I don’t write poetry often – hardly at all – but at that time, poetry began to flow, and the flow was a path to – or perhaps more like a river of – healing. I’d never claim to be alone here – it’s a common experience.

Crosses in the sky ….

   Which is a long way round to looking briefly at this week’s News. Perfectionism is an enemy when it suggests that life can be perfect. This is by nature an imperfect world, but it can be a balanced world. Where although there is suffering there is also joy, although there is betrayal there is also faithfulness, although there is drought and flood both the rain and the heat of the sun are necessary for life.

Perfectionism, pulled out of shape, becomes obsession. The temptation to believe  that if this or that were not so, our lives would be easier, we’d more more wealthy, have more leisure, the country would run smoothly, the trains run to time, the doctor have next-day appointments, the school system would be fairer to everyone. As Lamott says, ‘a mean, frozen form of idealism…’ with the emphasis on mean idealism. Obsessed, the perfectionist idealist loses the concept of moderation, and embraces an impatient inability tolerate the views of others.

Here is the irony: patterns are made from the messes of life, and it is even possible that perfect hate can be overcome when we come together, first in shock and sorrow, but then to think … to examine ourselves … to rebuild a community determined to make the mess into a meaningful pattern of better things.

Togetherness. 

Which could become  the stuff of realistic hope… ?

RIP Jo Cox … can we hope this act against a generous spirit is not the beginning of the end but the end of the beginning …? Latest stories here.  And here.

(Link stories from the BBC News (Oxford) Website and BBC News Website)

So why do I write about day to day life and  crises among contemporary families … rather than crime, mystery, or fantasy …?

Perfect Days: in a green and pleasant land?