Hope (And Parts Of Speech)

The notion of hope has been on my mind a lot lately, for reasons that are obvious. In some circles, hope is a four-letter word, a sure sign of delusion. We wonder if we have any business having hope. In other circles, it gets tossed around like a sparkly, pastel beach ball, admired and appreciated, but not really landing anywhere. We know we want it, but not how to hold onto it.

I do with hope what any philosopher would: pick it apart. I want to know what it feels like to have it, how and when it shows up and disappears, and how it can be nurtured and maintained. I wonder about when it’s justified, and when it’s just silly.

I also do with hope what many writers would: look for stories about it, and clever quips that capture it just so. For the subject of hope, I like to go back to something Canadian writer Margaret Laurence once said in an interview:

"It’s a sense of hope, which is not the same as optimism. I mean, optimism in a world like ours seems to me to be a relatively impossible quality. But I do think that a sense of hope comes out in all my writing, and partly because that is my own stance toward life. I couldn’t live if I didn’t believe there was some hope. And I think that writers who maintain that they are totally in despair, I don’t think they are, because I think that the reaction to total despair would be silence, would be a kind of withdrawal. I mean, the very act of writing, in a sense, is an act of faith or hope.”

I think Laurence’s distinguishing of hope from optimism is important. Hope doesn’t require us to cling to the belief that everything will be okay. We do a disservice to hope when we squash it into fluffy, pink, candy-coated wishful thinking. I think it’s also important to sit with Laurence’s notion of despair and silence as being the opposite of hope.

I agree with Laurence that writing is an act of hope. Why would I bother sitting at a keyboard or picking up a pen if there were no point to it? Wrestling with words and ideas is too involved a practice for it to have no endgame, no goal.

I’d argue that, for similar reasons, thinking philosophically is also an act of hope. Why would I bother to ask questions, to persist in trying to figure things out, if there were no conversations to be had, no nuggets of wisdom to be sought?

In both writing and doing philosophy, I continually reframe hope as a verb, instead of a noun. Thinking of hope as a thing, a possession even, makes it feel weird. It makes me afraid of never finding it, of no one giving me any, and of the possibility of losing it. Hope feels a little more attainable and sustainable to me as a verb. I don’t have hope, I do hope. I don’t find or keep hope, I just hope. I hope like I brush my teeth, do laundry, or answer emails. It’s something I do, but more importantly, something I choose to do. Hope as a verb has intention, potential, possibility, and direction. It has momentum and drive, enough to move me away from silence and despair.

Hope as a verb isn’t as pretty as hope as a noun. As someone pointed out on social media recently, “People speak of hope as if it is this delicate, ephemeral thing made of whispers and spider’s webs. It’s not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of the cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go.” (@crowsfault) Hope is hard work. It’s messy, tiring, and doesn’t provide any guarantee that you’ll end up where you want to be. It requires re-dos and second chances, time-outs and recharges. But as a writer, I know that you can’t edit a blank page. As a philosopher, I know that if you don’t ask the questions, you get zero answers. I hope for a living, and I hope so that I have a life. Something may come of the things that I do because I hope.

There are so many ways to practice hope as a verb. If you are reaching out to your community, even in small ways, you hope. If you are reading to your child and talking to them like they’re an intelligent being, you hope. If you are growing your own vegetables or sewing your own clothes, you hope. If you are supporting a local artist or business, you hope. If you are a researcher or you are workshopping a problem, you hope. If you teach or you heal, you hope. If you are slapping on a mask to go get groceries, you hope. If you are posting information or encouragement online (trolling doesn’t count), you hope. If you’re like me, and you spend your time creating and sharing, you hope.

If you got out of bed this morning and made something or did something, you hope.

Something may come from any of these acts, however tiny, perhaps something wonderful. There’s no guarantee, but there is the possibility. Given that the alternative is silence and despair, I don’t feel like quibbling over the grandeur or reach of these acts. Hoping is hoping.

It may very well be the case that no one reads what I’m now typing. This post will most likely disappear into the noise without many eyeballs on it. I’m still doing it, tippety-tapping my hope onto a screen, because I’m convinced there’s something to my actions. Toni Morrison tells us “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

Go big or small with your hope. Go pro or maintain your amateur status. Hope out loud or whisper it to yourself. Just hope. You probably already are.