Regarding Hope

“Hope is a good thing,” says Andy Dufresne, the main protagonist in Stephen King’s The Shawshank Redemption, “maybe the best thing.”

In this story a man who claims to be wrongfully accused of killing his wife and her lover is sent to prison for life, and over a period of time develops a plan to escape from the hell that is prison life. The overarching themes of corruption, injustice and the hope for freedom are ones that perhaps resonate with many Americans today. This may be due in part to the high rates of incarceration in the United States that has only gotten more stringent and extreme over the course of the past several decades (particularly for people of color — perhaps so much so that if the film adaptation of this story were made today, the choice to make the lead character a white man would be seen as almost laughably tone-deaf.) It’s not unreasonable to believe that millions of Americans have experienced at least a portion of the kinds of hardships depicted in King’s novel firsthand.

Just as significant perhaps is the fact that many Americans living in the year 2020 are just not feeling that sense of “liberty and justice for all” that we learned about when we were pledging our allegiance to the flag as grade-schoolers. Given the current climate, it’s easier for us to look toward the darkest shadows in our line of sight and ignore any signs of hope or light.

Often I find myself tempted to respond to political posts and comments on social media from fellow users with foreboding messages of gloom and doom, and of course not without good reason. The circumstances we find ourselves in at this juncture are alarming to say the least: a worldwide pandemic that has killed over 200,000 Americans, sweeping unemployment with no end in sight, an unbridled power grab by a political party seemingly hellbent on rolling back any and all social progress made over the last century, led by a man who by all indications seems to be gunning for the job of autocratic ruler for life - all of this happening against a backdrop of an ongoing environmental crisis that threatens to end all life on this planet as we know it.

Frankly it’s difficult to see a good way out of any of this. Taking it all in, it sometimes looks as though the collapse of American democracy and the possibility of an all-out civil war are inevitable. I think it’s important though, for all of us to ask ourselves: what is it we really want to see happen right now?

Proponents of The Law of Attraction will tell us that we attract into our lives what we think about most, even if it’s something that we think we don’t want. So if we wake up every morning saying to ourselves, “I don’t want to be late for work, I don’t want to be late for work!” chances are you will end up being late anyway, because the energy you are putting out into the world and surrounding yourself with is all about being late. Whether you classify it as "God" or "The Universe" listening to your words and absorbing your thoughts, or just the power of your own negativity influencing your actions, if you think late for work then late for work is what you will get.

So when I am tempted with jumping head-first into a lengthy post about the dire consequences we potentially face as a result of all that’s going on, I have to stop and ask myself: “What kind of energy am I trying to put out into the world with my words? What is it that I truly want to see happen as a result of my words and actions? Is it possible for me, as Gandhi said, to be the change I wish to see?”

In my mind I can’t help but feel that King’s hope quote echoes, perhaps conversely, a famously misquoted line from Alexander Pope’s poem An Essay on Criticism. The line has often been paraphrased as “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” which on its face may seem to imply to some that it is somehow better to remain ignorant about certain things. The actual quote is as follows:

A little learning is a dangerous thing.

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again.

In this short passage from a much longer work, Pope is describing the essence of the sophomoric mind, or the wise fool who is uninformed or under-informed about a particular subject, yet still somehow feels that they are qualified to expound upon it at any length or to even hold an educated opinion on said subject. Some of us may be familiar with the psychological phenomenon as the Dunning-Kruger effect, a state of mind that allows one to have an overinflated sense of their own abilities. This will, in Pope's estimation, invariably lead to a “dangerous” situation.

The world seems to be full of talking heads regurgitating well-tread political talking points; from the mouths of politicians directly to pundits on cable-television, spilling over onto the internet and then ultimately onto the lips of our real-world friends and neighbors — ideas get passed along like a juvenile game of telephone, ending up devoid of their original meanings and intentions, the true political agendas behind them obscured.

Is it reasonable to believe that someone like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell really cares whether or not you or someone you care about gets an abortion? Most likely he does not. Is it more reasonable to believe that he or another politician of his ilk would align himself and his party with anti-abortion sectors of the population as a means of consolidating and insuring political power along religious, cultural and racially-divisive lines, with the added bonus of oppressively controlling the lives of women, particularly women from minority, low-income and working class communities? Yes, I would say that is a far more accurate assessment, and in fact precisely what he and others have done and continue to do.

How many people will really stop to question the motives behind the rhetoric that has become endemic to their political party of choice? How many of us really take the time to read and research the things we’ve heard said on our favorite cable-news programs or opinions expressed on our social media feeds? How many of us truly employ the kind of critical thinking required to be an informed citizen and voter in this political climate?

In truth we are all guilty sometimes of being personally swayed by our own biases, especially now that we are all able to seal ourselves inside of these “virtual echo chambers” where we don’t have to listen to anyone who disagrees with us. The noise generated by all of these wise fools proclaiming half-truths and disseminating blatant disinformation often drowns out the voices of learned experts who actually know what they are talking about and have much to offer. As much as we all want to feel that our way of thinking and seeing things is the right way and that any other perspective is suspect at best, I believe that deep down we all know better.

As much as I personally am vehemently opposed to Donald Trump and his party of enabling-sycophants and yes-men who are attempting to overthrow our democratically elected government that is supposed to be “by and for the people” with a fascist autocracy controlled by ultra-wealthy industrialists and foreign oligarchs — I refuse to see my friends and neighbors who have been caught up in supporting this madness as being inherently evil, or anything other than tragically shortsighted and/or misinformed. As much as it is tempting for me in my mind to overtly vilify all of them, in the end what good will that really serve?

Is it possible that the remedy to the dangers that come from “a little bit of learning” may lie in the kind of hope that would come from “drinking largely” from the springs of knowledge that one could only attain from a lot of learning? Or at the very least, a little bit more learning?

To be certain, the more we can read, learn and understand about what is really going on in this crazy world, the better informed and empowered we can be to make the complex choices and decisions we need to make in order to navigate our way through these troubled times. The more we can train ourselves not to be automatically repulsed, angered or fearful of differing points of view, but rather to come to them with an open mind, ready to discuss and decipher — to teach what we know and learn about what we don’t, the more we might be able to bridge this seemingly irreparable divide in our society and actually begin to do the work that needs to be done.

We live in an amazing time. I don’t say that lightly or with any degree of sarcasm — these are truly amazing times. In spite of all the chaos and confusion we seem to be plagued with, we are still so blessed to have so much. We have access to so much knowledge, so much information, so much light and truth — so much potential for enrichment and learning; but we are at a delicate tipping point right now. We could either head towards a future that is bright and full of hope, or tip over the edge into a nightmare of darkness and despair. It may be a little bit frightening to think that the choice as to which way we go is entirely in our own hands. In this life though, it is always better to have a choice than to have choices made for us.

Most of us have likely heard the well-known parable originating in India in which three blind men are each touching different parts of an elephant. Each one of them makes a different declaration as to what it is that they are touching, from the snake-like feeling of the trunk, the tree-like texture of the legs or the rope-like length of the tail. Despite all of these different conclusions, there was still only one truth: there was only one elephant that was made up of all of these differing parts.

Truth isn’t always easy, and it isn’t always pretty — but it will always set you free. Just as one plus one will always equal two, truth will always be truth. No matter what viewpoint we may be looking at it from or what path we may take to get there, there will always be only one truth at which we can arrive.

There is hope to be found in truth, and in believing that truth still matters.

In stopping myself from going down the wormhole of negative thinking and engaging in Nostradamus-like prophetic Facebook rants, I find myself often repeating the words of Jesse Jackson: “Keep hope alive.”

The now cliché sounding sentiment became a part of the American lexicon during Jackson’s historic presidential campaigns of the 1980s. African-Americans have long had to rely on hope as a means of getting us through the darkest and most difficult times in our collective history. As trite and as tired as it may sound to some, I find myself taking great comfort and finding great strength in these words today.

The truth is this: that the only place we can really find hope is to find it within ourselves, and the only way we can keep it alive is to remember exactly what hope really means to us. Does hope mean hanging onto empty promises made by politicians or the incendiary screeds of television and radio hosts or political commentators? Does hope come from stubbornly sticking to our guns so tightly that we have nothing to do but shoot ourselves in our own feet? Does hope come from warring with our friends, family and neighbors — or worse yet, warring with the better angels of our own consciousness?

I believe that for most of us — really all of us — hope comes from the thought that no matter what happens over the course of a day, that when we go to bed at night, we will wake up in the morning and the sun will still rise. Birds will sing and flowers will bloom; it will rain in the spring and it will snow in the winter, and after every storm the sun will shine again. It comes from knowing we can breathe clean air and drink clean water; it comes from knowing we will be able to eat healthy food that will nourish our bodies. Hope comes from knowing that we will be able to feed and clothe and keep roofs over the heads of our families and loved ones, and that our children will be able to live and grow, go to school and learn, and we can live to see them go on and live a life better than any we ever could have dreamt of for ourselves.

Hope comes from believing that one day this nation of ours will truly live up to the words that we all have been taught to recite by rote: that “all men are created equal,” and that we really are “one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all” — justice that is truly for all, and not just for some.

Hope comes from believing that “the American Dream,” isn’t just something we read about or see on television, and that our “freedom of choice” means something more than deciding which flat-screen TV, smartphone or SUV we want to buy. Hope comes from believing that this is still a land of opportunity, where a little hard work and ingenuity can carry us from the humblest of beginnings to the greatest heights that the wings of our dreams could carry us.

Hope comes from believing that our lives really do matter — and no, you can’t say that “all lives matter” and mean it until you can say unabashedly and without hesitation that BLACK LIVES MATTER!

Hope comes from believing that no matter who we are or where we come from, no matter what language we speak or what God we pray to, no matter who we love or how much money we have — that we have a voice, we have a right to be who we are and we have a place where we belong.

Hope comes from us. It comes from the words we speak and the energy behind our actions. Hope lives in everything we do and say, it lives in how we choose to look at the world and how we choose to treat people. “Hope is a good thing,” as Andy Dufresne would say, “maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

Hope is life, hope springs eternal — and right now, hope may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves.

Keep hope alive.