Consuming the news, all that is cruel and unfair is laid out for us to read, watch or listen to in all its mawkish detail. Putin remains free to wreak havoc, natural disasters destroy the homes of innocent families, Trump gets another shot at re-election, despite everything. And yet, every time hope gets crushed to the ground, it rises again.

Emily Dickinson’s poem, “Hope” is the thing with feathers calls hope, ‘the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul / And sings the tune without the words / And never stops at all. Hope never stops.

Positive change happens at glacial pace, with as many setbacks as steps forward. Trump and his cronies were referred to as, ‘the last fart of a dying dog’ back in 2016. Whilst not as majestic a phrase as Martin Luther King Junior’s ‘The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice’—inspired by Theodore Parker’s sermon on Justice and the Conscience—the ‘dying dog’ brigade and Dr King were on the same page. 

They were both trying to say that things get better, s l o w l y. And when things are getting better, sometimes we have to endure a moral Luddite like Trump throwing himself under the wheels of progress, in order to stall things for a few more years.

Diagnosing a problem

We move, at a glacial pace, continually into slightly better circumstances. The Internet, media, and social media help shine a light on what’s happening, so that we can begin to define the curves and edges of our most critical problems. If we can define, we can diagnose. 

And as Rebecca Solnit puts it in Hope in the Dark, we do not need to know the prescription before the diagnosis is complete.

In 2016 I quit working in a newsroom and stopped consuming the news for the sake of my mental health. Trump’s election, Brexit, then Covid eventually led to my turning off Radio 4 in the house, so that I could have some peace from the news hurricane.

But having re-read Solnit’s wonderful Hope in the Dark this month, I realise that whilst it’s painful to engage with the details, reading bad news helps us to see the issue properly (media and social media bias notwithstanding), in order to understand what the shape of the problem is—where we are in the fight.

I recently watched She Said, a film of the 2019 book by Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor about their struggle to expose the systemic abuse of women in Hollywood by Harvey Weinstein, amongst others. Despite pressure to silence the brave women who exposed Weinstein’s horrendous behaviour, these two journalists knew the truth. They were determined to expose it, and have changed the global workplace for women in the process. The subsequent MeToo movement became too overwhelming to document. It has changed the workplace, and the world.

Hope makes the present inhabitable

Hope is, in a sense, a search for the truth. Once uncovered, the truth is there to be held up to the light, if we are brave enough. It is not the likely success of the initiative that should fuel our fight. It is adhering to the truth, and helping to spread it as far as we can.

Solnit argues that we would not have had the same war in Iraq if global publics had acquiesced to the original Bush/Blair plan. The global protest movement surrounding the war changed it. Reduced the scope of it. Made it smaller, and shorter. 

The millions of people who marched, the individuals who made ‘STOP THE WAR’ placards didn’t get what they wanted, but they changed the course of things, and who knows how much more extensive the war would have been without them.

To be effective, activists have to make strong, simple, urgent demands…And they have to recognise that their victories may come as subtle, complex, slow changes…and count them anyway. A gift for embracing paradox is not the least of the equipment an activist should have.

rebecca solnit

Solnit points out that hope is not a passive emotion but rather a stirring force that will get people up off their sofas and into the world to make a difference:

Hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky… Hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency; because hope should shove you out the door

Rebecca Solnit

‘To hope’, Solnit writes, ‘is to give yourself to the future, and that commitment to the future makes the present inhabitable.’

Look for the helpers

The philosopher Ryan Holiday writes in his modern stoicism book, Stillness is the Key, about Fred Rogers, a American childrens’ television presenter whose show, Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood, aired from 1968 to 2001. 

“Look for the helpers”, Mr Rogers would tell the children whenever a horrible news story broke in the world. “The world is full of doctors and nurses, police and firemen, volunteers, neighbours and friends who are ready to jump in to help when things go wrong.”

Hope as a way to find purpose

Hope, looking for helpers, and helping itself, gets us through when something utterly unfair is happening. Hope doesn’t mean that everything will turn out ok, but it can help us to find purpose and meaning in a world that seems fundamentally unfair and difficult.

The playwright, intellectual and politician Vaclav Havel used hope as his own lifeline whilst imprisoned between 1979 and 1983. He makes clear that hope is part of the soul, to be found even in seemingly hopeless situations:

Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

vaclav havel

Havel went on to be elected President of Czechoslovakia in 1989 after hope got him through his time in prison.

The arc of the moral universe may bend slowly towards justice, but it is up to each of us to help bend it. We must search for, uphold, and spread the truth, however gradual and imperfect the progress.

Though the present remains full of suffering and setbacks, we can make it inhabitable through acts of hope – by looking for helpers, helping others, and finding purpose and meaning. Hope fuels the spirit when circumstances seem bleak; it pushes us to keep fighting for what is right and for the truth.

We may not see the fruits of our labour in our lifetimes, but we can live with purpose knowing we stood for truth and justice. The future is uncertain, yet hope makes today inhabitable and gives us the strength to take the next step.