When one thinks about deep hope, what one
thinks about first is avoiding superficial
hopes like, “I hope that my Domino’s pizza
will arrive on time,” or even the ambitious
hopes, “I hope that my career is successful.”
These things portend to a future realizable
desire.
And they situate that desire as probable.
When we think about deep hope we’re thinking
about something that’s not linked to a desire,
to the future, to an ambition or to probability.
We’re thinking about a relationship to the
present in a particular kind of discipline
as one faces the present.
Because when one faces the present one realizes
things like: 'Life is short.
Even though I’d like to live long I have
no idea whether or not I will.
My friends, my animals are all in very contingent
relationships to life itself, and to me, in
that we walk not on concrete but in quicksand.'
So when you face those real facts about what
life is and you say, “How do I relate to
these facts?”
The answer, I think, that comes out of the
work I study, is that one faces these facts
with a deep hope that is not an aspiration,
it’s not a probability, it’s not a future
orientation.
It’s a grounded-ness in the present facts
of existence.
Unfortunately our culture has emphasized the
trivial hopes because those are hopes that
link to markets and to achievements, which
are always sort of market-linked, because
markets are about growth, they’re about
ambition, they’re about accomplishment,
they’re about expansion.
So therefore, our culture really generates
a propensity to trivial and superficial hopes,
right?
It counters and has made a deep hope, kind
of—we’re famished when it comes to deep
hope.
There’s a sort of anorexia when it comes
to deep hope.
We've massaged and accentuated this idea of
ourselves as consumers, as participants in
the market that venerates instant gratification
and the satisfaction of our desires in immediate
kinds of ways.
To generate the deep hope, the kind of hope
that I think comes out of the traditions I
study, one has to really slow down and face
a different set of facts.
And those facts are about the fundamentals
of the experience of life.
That is to say, life is tragic.
One’s promises will never be completely
fulfilled and one’s desires can never ultimately
be met.
That is just what life is.
So how do we cultivate a deep hope in the
face of a culture which wants to accentuate
instant gratification and overstimulation?
Well I say it requires us to take some steps
back.
To step out of the market culture.
To step away from the interests of global
capital which are about accomplishment, achievement,
expansion and growth, and to do more work
around a sense of quietude, do more interior
work and do more work in communities that
affirm togetherness in a collective sense
of what can go on outside of markets.
So things like gentleness and compassion.
There’s marvelous work that’s being done
in schools and community centers and in art
workshops, artist workshops, where people
come together and engage in—they don’t
talk about hope, they just sort of quietly
face the present with a sense of being there.
Deep hope comes from a rich engagement in
those kinds of rooted tasks, that kind of
groundedness that we get from community and
collectives and relationships that have little
to do with market values but are more about
a more organic connectedness and fundamental
linkages with the true facts of life and one
another.
