Hope

“Why don’t we accept the uncertainty of the future while also remaining proactive about building a better, more hopeful society?”

There are two contrasting ways in which people often confront an uncertain future: either with ‘Despair’ or ‘Optimism’. Rebecca Solnit said that ‘Despair’ and ‘Optimism’ work on the basis of not acting forward, because these attitudes are grounded in wishful thinking — we tend to think ‘everything will be for worse or better’, whereas ‘Hope’ involves acting on reality.

The locals in South Africa talk about ‘hopeless conditions’. They talk about leaving their own country for a better life. They make comments about incompetent government leaders. They talk about lack of job opportunities. The scale of challenges is different, but the issues are not worlds apart from the ones we consistently face in the UK. As a result of hearing about high unemployment rates, failed policies, broken social security, high living costs, high crime rates and unequal opportunities in the media, I realised that I sometimes talk about the future in despair as well — as if everything is wrong and nothing will improve. So I began wondering when I became so sure that the future would be negative. I started to question why we can’t accept the uncertainty of the future while at the same time remaining proactive about building a better, more hopeful society — rather than becoming disconsolate, apathetic and wishful.

Woolf’s darkness: embracing the inexplicable, Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit