I've always had a problem with the concept of hope.
It has seemed to me we too often are called to rely on hope as a call to face the future with blinders. It is to disregard the dark and focus only on the light, even if the light is a product of our optimistic fantasies. This optimistic hope is most often what we turn to when we live in denial of the truths that our lives encounter.
Vaclav Havel, the Czechoslovakian non-violent revolutionary, poet, playwright and president who recently died at the age of 75 wrote: “Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
As Havel suggests, we confuse hope with optimism. When we make this mistake, hope becomes an act of will. It is, especially in the culture of America, the philosophy of “the power of positive thinking.” We think if we hope hard enough, things will turn out the way we want them to turn out. Hope, just like prayers that are the product of our will, becomes magical thinking. If we had hoped with a proper intensity, or prayed with enough faith, our desires would have come to pass.
In recent days, the horrors of the First World War have been brought to mind by Stephen Spielberg's film 'War Horse,' and public television’s Masterpiece Theater 'Downton Abby' production.
In both examples, World War I is depicted in both its horror and its hope. The horror is revealed in the depiction of the gross death, carnage and suffering the war caused to both human beings and the animals that supported the war effort.
The hope was suggested in the optimism that the war would “end all wars,” and participating in the war was the way to serve both God and country. The hopeful optimism became a direct cause of the horrific results from the war.
The stories of World War I and the false hope expressed there are similar to our contemporary hopes the military efforts in Iraq will bring the light of democracy to that Middle Eastern country. A hope that is now deteriorating in the absence of American military might.
Another “hope”-- suggested by nearly all the Republican presidential candidates -- is for military action against Iran that would somehow solve our problems with that nation. If acted upon, such an action would bring about new, and unimagined horrors, with the unintended consequences of war always worse than those things for which we had hoped.
Havel suggests that true hope transcends blind optimism. With hope, we do not depend on things turning out the way we want them to turn out. Rather, we desire to understand who we are in the midst of the circumstances in which we find ourselves. We work to make sense of it all.
As we try to understand, we adjust our thinking to accommodate the realities we experience. Through a deepening self-knowledge, we face life’s circumstances with a growing strength and courage. A hope, freed of its optimistic fantasies, sets the human heart and mind free as well.
Hope, true hope, helps us face reality while at the same time it encourages us to seek alternatives when that for which we hope fails. Optimism, without hope, leaves one discouraged and repeating the same failed responses over and over again.
Hope, like true faith, does not depend on the objective reality of what one hopes for or has faith in. Rather, it creates in you a deep sense of centeredness that secures you no matter what the reality you face.
Americans and America has been, and is, a land of optimistic opportunity. So long as our optimism realizes success, we believe that our society is well. The problem is that without the kind of hope suggested by Havel, we do not know what to do when opportunity fails and our optimistic perspective is at a dead end.
It is time to begin nurturing true hope. We need a hope not based on optimism, but one centered in reality.
