How do you all keep up hope?

[KatiePla.net]

I've been thinking on this a lot lately, and I was happy to see this thread. It's really scary to lose hope, and seeing honest posts about others struggles is really comforting and refreshing to read - thank you everyone for sharing their vulnerability and thoughts here.

As for me, I have good days and bad days in regards to hope. The one virtue I try to cling to in life is this:

I fight for the things that I love only for the simple fact that I love them.

Quite frankly, that's it. I love the earth, the planet, its animals and all of its people. This is my home and the only planet I'll ever know, and damn it I'm going to fight for it till the bitter end, I just don't care how "hopeless" the situation is.

Because realistically, what's the alternative? To just accept that things are bad, and submit to the circumstances? To cower in the face of bad odds and let the things I love perish? To let the bad guys win, all because I'm too scared to fight?

Only my enemies thrive in my submission to their circumstances, and I hate them to much to have that over me. Only my enemies lose power in the face of my opposing, shining hope, and I'll wield hope as my sword until the battle has been seen through to the end. No fascist, no corporation, no government and no evil will succeed in taking my hope from me, I will die with hope in my last breath before I ever give my heart to the side of evil.

The greatest foolishness we humans can do is give up a battle before its even lost - the only option we create for ourselves then is defeat.

I'm no blind optimist - I'm well aware of the numbers, the statistics, the current science. By all metrics, things don't look good, and I know this battle we're facing won't be won so easy. But for as long as we submit, we are leaving no room for anything else other than evil. Can I not make room in my heart to believe in miracles? Leave faith for the hardworking conservationists, scientists, and volunteers who are giving their all to help us win?

So if I sound like a crazy, radical optimist - it's because I am. Because why should I be anything else? Because I hope one day, you can be one too.

How can you help cultivate hope within others and yourself?
1. Do not be ashamed of having hope. Be loud, be vocal, and let others know you are OUT there, that there are still those fighting "the good fight" and that there's community and solidarity in shared belief. Art, protests, silly T-shirts, zines, visibly mended jeans, smiles, and a posts like these are all proof that hope lives on and that there are still people out there trying to make the world a better place.
2. Let hope be a JOYFUL experience. As I mentioned earlier, hope can be hard to grasp - the odds are scary and the opposition will do everything in it's power to make hope feel like a lost cause, a painful disappointing emotion, and a waste of time - this is ANYTHING but the truth. No matter what you do to share the light of hope, your actions DO have impact, and the joy you create from supporting hope will always outweigh the negative emotions of inaction and despair.
3. Find what you love most, and fight for it the hardest. We all love countless things in life - art, music, poetry, turtles, you name it. But when you start to list all the things you love and combine it with all the things you need to do to help them, it can be overwhelming to say the least. Again, the opposition RELIES on this tactic to overwhelm us, making us feel like if we can't save it all we might as well not even try. Once again, this is NOT anywhere close to the truth. The reality is, our scope of action may small, but it is not meaningless. If you love turtles, it is better to go all in on being "The Hero Turtle Guy" than trying to be an expert of everything all at once (you won't succeed and will just burn yourself out - a symptom many of us feel as a source of our hopelessness).
4. Get off the digital poison and look around yourself, at the real world around you that's still thriving and begging to be fought for. I know we all know this, but how many of us really can separate ourselves from the doomscrolling? Doomscrolling is a WEAPON designed to crush our spirits, lulling us deeper into a state of acceptance and passivity towards evil. Don't let the soul crushing machine grind you down! I can't express how important disconnecting from sources of doom and replacing it with sources of love will change your life, your outlook, and the opportunity for good you can do in this world.

I know I can't change the world all on my own, but it's okay because I know I was never meant to do it alone. My greatest joy in life and my biggest contribution to the world is helping people see that the world is not lost, and that for as long as love and joy live we have things worth fighting for.

 

If you ever need someone to talk to about hope, hopelessness, action, inaction, your fears or your passions, or just need a friend to help you find that joy, feel free to DM me here and we can swap emails - I'd love to help you find your hope again. 

Love and strength to all who need it in these hard times.

[AY38910]

Honestly, sometimes I feel that the "AI takeover" you see in films where the bots end up taking your place would be better, that we have already proved to not be good at ruling the world.
Sometimes I feel that maybe we deserve another chance, that we can try again and hopefully not make the same mistakes.
Sometimes I feel that we should all die.
Sometimes I feel that we should just keep going no matter what, maybe things will go better in the future.

But mostly, I don't care if we make it or not, at least we're still here. At least I still have mom, dad, my friends, etc.

[nvalk1]

I believe in the power and love of Christ. Also, a good prayer life makes so much better. Prayer isn't about using God as your personal slot machine, though. Prayer is meant to change YOU, not God.

For those who don't know, start with the Jesus Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner

Be blessed.

[boreal_cryptid]

connecting to my heritage and culture - even practicing my language brings me sense of purpose again. honestly, sometimes it's all i have. having purpose helps.

meme about "touching grass" isn't a meme for me. i'd rather touch some snow, but grass will do too.

[Monoki]

I wont go into specifics, but I think its safe to say the world is... in a bad place. Has been, for years. How do you all keep going? Through the many trifles and tribulations, through the horror of what you'll have to face?

How do you do it? Cuz im sure having trouble doing it, and I don't even have a job!

Thats a really good question if I’m being honest.

Part of it is religion. I don’t want to seem trite in saying this, but I do think it honestly helps. I’m a Christian and I think that gives me a certain outlook that embraces suffering. In some way, suffering makes hope shine brighter and makes me look to the God who will bring me through those trials: either through their abatement and resolution, or ultimately through my death and future resurrection.

It’s not a magic bullet to be quite clear. Because even religious men struggle with despair, hopelessness, and depression. But in matters of the spiritual it is one good tool in the arsenal against such things.



Part of it is not over extending myself unnecessarily and knowing my limits. Getting away from depressing news for long periods of time I think is crucial. Or even just getting off the internet for a bit. We weren’t meant to be omniscient, omnipresent, or omnipotent. And I think the more we try, the more we stress ourselves out. Our culture is very good about convincing us we need to get rid of our limits as if they are a bad thing. But I think in a lot of ways, limits can be a great gift we fail to recognize in our productivity/profit driven culture. Balance is good to have and we desperately need it.

Having people to talk to IRL I think is something we need too. Even I struggle in this area and have for most of my life. But I have my wife and our families and a small amount of friends here or there.
 We need in person communities desperately in our culture. As wonderful as a tool the internet is, and it really is, it can’t replace person-to-person contact. And I would argue it’s not meant to.

Mind you these are my ramblings. Take what you will, leave what you will, I offer them as I figure out what prevents me from despairing so easily.

[Seraphim]

I recently saw a video where someone was, out loud, trying to process their feelings about the state of the world. The hopelessness, the despair, the ever-present low level anxiety. And the conclusion that they came to was that all of these feelings were Grief. Not the grief of losing a loved one, but the collective grief of what could have been. Sadness for those who are suffering, missing the potential futures that were lost, anger at those who prevent the world from improving for seemingly no reason. This person felt that they were going through stages of grief, and that they would continue to feel those feelings.
Strangely, hearing it put so succinctly really helped me process and make peace with it. Especially the part where they, and I, realized that we will continue to feel that hopelessness, the anger, the longing, because

I love the earth, the planet, its animals and all of its people. This is my home and the only planet I'll ever know, and damn it I'm going to fight for it till the bitter end, I just don't care how "hopeless" the situation is.

And so I have arrived at a place of hardened hopefulness. I was once an idealistic optimist, and I have come to know the reality of the world, and have chosen to have a bitter, resilient, hardened hope that things will get better one day. 

[fuwaka]

you do what you can. whatever that may be. perhaps it’s taking care of your pet, or keeping up with your medications and reaching out to loved ones and remind them that you care. updating your site, strolling the forums… you gotta do whatever you have to do in order to keep hope alive. ( ´_ゝ`)

  existence is resistance.

[ialu]

To put it bluntly, I sort of just don't; that, or, at the very least, I don't try to. Not because I have given up, but because, from my own perspective, I find myself much more motivated by realism. As I see it, "hope" is valuable only to the extent that it is rational; if we're defining it as a belief that circumstances may improve, then as long as I can survey my surroundings and believe that to truly be the case, then I have hope. I don't necessarily try and cultivate hope for the sake of hope; like how an excess of pessimism can be destructive, an excess of hope can lead you to sub-optimal decision making and be more emotionally damaging overall.

I will say, though, there are vanishingly few situations on the global scale where there is simply no hope or chance of recovery. As I see it, the world gets ever more progressive and liberated as time continues; there are, of course, lapses both small and severe in this gradual progression, but it all seems to follow the same trend to me. Moreover, the future is forged, not predetermined; I notice that what often happens in discussions and calls to "keep hope" is a sort of removal of oneself as an agent and instead a repositioning as a passive observer. Of course, the extent to which any given person can engage with these things can vary, and this is in no way meant to imply anyone is at fault for not engaging with these things, but all across the world, there are political movements brewing which you may become involved with. Part of my own hope is the knowledge that, not only are others doing things to counteract any injustice, but I, too, am capable of these things.

Of course, this is just how I, on an individual level, view things; some people take a more active approach to maintaining their own motivation, and that is fine.