This post is an archive of the Growth Through Disruption newsletter sent May 7, 2020. Click here to subscribe and join tens of thousands of leaders across the globe growing through disruption together.
“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul—and sings the tunes without words and never stops at all.”
— Emily Dickinson
I was twenty-one years old and freshly arrived in Montevideo, Uruguay, from the United States.
For the next 18 months I wasn’t going to see my family or friends––we would communicate via letter only, except for a phone call home on Christmas and Mother’s Day. I’d chosen to come to this far-flung place as a missionary, but reality was setting in. Jet-lagged and homesick, I opted for a nap.
I was roused from my slumber sooner than I would’ve liked to discover something wonderful was happening outside my bedroom window. Birds were chirping—not just one or two, but dozens—a grand welcoming chorus. I’d left winter at home; in Uruguay it was spring.
“Hope is the thing…that perches in the soul.”
Over the past few months, I’ve had to make choices. We’re all having to make choices about what future world we want to build out of the rubble of the present.
Will we choose to give up, give in to existential despair, or will we choose hope that in the end all will be well. That spring will come again?
To be clear, there are different kinds of hope. And some ‘hopes’, we would do well to relinquish. Hope that present circumstances would suddenly be different, that bad things that have happened hadn’t happened. These are really wishes, and unfulfillable. As Beverly Flanigan said, “Forgiveness is giving up hope of ever having a better past.” The past can’t be changed, only our perspective of it. And some of our proximate hopes, things we anticipated rolling our way in the near future, need to be abandoned as well, in favor of longer term, ultimate hopes.
Because as much as we need hope, we don’t need false hope. Which is the subject of this week’s podcast, an interview with Kelly Goldsmith (yes, daughter of one of my wonderful mentors!). I find the conclusions of her research refreshing and helpful during a time of limited resources, and pronounced feelings of scarcity.
Kelly suggests that scarcity itself isn’t the issue, but the absence of hope. When we know that something is truly gone—the boyfriend isn’t coming back, the money is lost, life as we’ve known it has permanently changed—we can mourn the loss and then lean into the constraint that has been created to grow in a different direction. Ironically, it’s when we’re still clinging to unrealizable hopes, uncertain, that we feel scarcity and those feelings become problematic.
People crave certainty, which is hard to come by, but if it’s certain that something is gone and not coming back, it’s better to face it. That’s loss, not scarcity, and when we know something is truly lost we can move on, rather than compensating in ultimately self-defeating ways. If there is hope, let people feel hope. If there isn’t, don’t string people along, inadvertently creating scarcity, thinking it’s kinder. It’s not.
Are you allowing people to feel hope about something that you shouldn’t?
Are you trapped in futile hope for a better past that you need to free yourself from?
What are you willing/able to choose to do to help build a more hopeful future?
Maybe it’s continuing to social (physical) distance when you’ve grown weary of distancing. Or thinking about not only the financial implications, but the long-term public health implications of the virus? Is it extending yourself, providing work for others, when you’d rather save your money for you and yours? Or even finding ways to serve, not necessarily where you want to serve, but where you’re needed?
Then there are the small things you can do. The delicate, little live things. Picking mint from the garden, putting it in a Mason jar with water and lots of ice. Washing dishes with your family after a home-cooked meal. Pushing open the window to listen to the birdsong. Whenever I hear the song of a bird, my heart sings with hope.
In your moments when you want to give up—even just a little—what can you do to rekindle hope? What gives you hope?
My best,
Whitney
| | 60 Rose Farm Hill Lane, Lexington, VA 24450
