Hope is an awesome experience. Other than the self-expression of “I’m okay”, “I feel hopeful”, may be the most rewarding feeling one can possess.
Hope is also elusive. Especially when there is an abundance of fear being felt in one’s life. Staying in the vulnerability of fear is no easy task. We can so quickly feel the survival responses of flight or fight. And particularly in these times, fight feels so much better than the softness of that delicate space around fear. We want to be angry. We want to lash out. We want to make others hurt the way that we are hurting and the more objectifiable the “other” is, the more we feel compelled to fuel the hatred and attack.
This is one reason hope is so important. It doesn’t come easy. Embodying the sense of hope is so closely related to being able to come to the place of “I’m okay” inside of ourselves. When we feel threatened, we want to leave our present state and once we begin that journey of self-abandonment, it’s very hard to find any notion of hope in ourselves.
I have been struggling a lot with this these days. I “know” these truths I just spoke to but I find myself wanting to run away from that delicate, internal place where trust and hope thrive. I know from my psychoanalytic training that the early mechanisms of splitting (internally separating “good from bad” and “love from hate”) can be a necessary protective function. However, the NEED for protection can so easily be misunderstood.
When those primitive states of fight and fear and flight get triggered, we lose our perspective on the Truth of our experience. We are seduced, if you will, into believing we really do need to protect. The paradox is that the elixir to this false belief is the very place we are so afraid to go to – that place of uncertainty, of “I don’t know”, of maybe.
Hope is not necessary when we know something. Hope is not knowing. Hope is believing, trusting, moving forward in the face of fear. Hope is the soft, tilled soil that sits underneath the hard rock of hatred and projection. Hope is the flower contained in the seed, waiting for the attention of warmth and sun and moisture to set it free. Hope allows us to keep on keeping on if you will.
Again, it’s so paradoxical that the route to hope is through the fog that often prevents us from seeing it. When there is anger or fear or frustration or even despair, the road to the place where hope is found is right through the middle of these feelings. Sometimes that can literally feel like we have to move right through the middle and allow the feelings to find their fullness inside of us rather than projected either onto someone or something else or used as a weapon to attack ourselves.
Another paradox is that it really doesn’t take too much of a dose of hope to begin to feel better. I’m reminded of Calcipher from the anime movie, “Howl’s Moving Castle”. He was the keeper of a very small ember of fire until the main character was ready to begin to fuel his life again and discover his passion. We must keep the embers alive inside of us.