We place a lot of conditions on the question of whether hope is warranted. That common practice deserves some scrutiny, though.
- Asking “Is hope warranted?” often leads to claims of “realism”, which is treated as justifying pessimism.
- As a result, hope can seem foolish, baseless, or simply a naïve way of seeing a world that is designed to disappoint.
- The whole exercise welcomes falsehood, starting from the false premise that hope should only be embraced when nothing is wrong.
- The most necessary, functional, and transformational way for hope to work is when all seems lost.
- The other idea—that it is only “reasonable” to be hopeful when the solution is at hand—is not hope at all, but comfort.
Hope is not comfortable; it rejects the comfort of an easy answer or a quick surrender. Hope demands attention from deeper places, more primordial than language or science, technology or politics. Hope is a decision to engage the world at the intersection of spirit and rationality.
Nothing is more rational than the determined commitment to strive toward the best outcome within the realm of the possible—the optimum. Optimism is not about belief or faith in good fortune; it is about doing what makes sense, instead of letting the senseless take over.
Hope works that way. When there is no obvious reason to declare that hardship will fade from experience, because so much is wrong and getting worse, that is when hope starts to move into the world.
Hopelessness insults and aggravates, creates tension and despair, because it suggests choices are being made to let survival and thriving become more elusive. It may feel sensible, even tempting, to despair in the face of hardship, setbacks, and injustice. Those feelings are honest and real, but they are not the negation of hope, nor do they reflect the history of our world. People live through and transcend injustice, carry their love and loss with dignity and character, with feeling and generosity. They may be scarred and tormented, but their humanity continues to open new futures.
Hope is not a feeling; it is a way of acting in the world, in defiance of the disappointments that inevitably come to any being that feels, builds bonds of trust, and imagines better times ahead. To be alive and aware, thinking and feeling, is to be a reservoir of hope.
The poet labors to bring “the star-strewn echoes of the wave” to “answer the heart caught in darkness.” It may be simpler to say: Evil will not prevail.