Hope

Lately, some of us have felt something we haven’t felt in a long time: hope.

It’s not that everything is suddenly wonderful. It isn’t. But between the Covid vaccines and, for many of us, the change of leadership in Washington, some of us are feeling a little lighter than we did a few weeks ago. 

Of course, if you’re like me, that hope might come with a few teaspoons of fretting. I feel afraid of hoping, lest those hopes be dashed by the next twist of news. I’d almost rather not hope. In fact, maybe I’ll doomscroll some more right now…

Fortunately, mindfulness has a few suggestions for how to enjoy, work with, and maybe learn from the experience of hope. Let’s look at three of them.

First, enjoy. You deserve it! Let realism and pessimism take a short break – five minutes? thirty seconds? – and see if you can enjoy the feeling of hope itself. Not because you’re accurately predicting the future; I’m sure you’re not. But just for now, in the moment of feeling it, hope can feel refreshing and restorative.

Remember what Alfred Lord Tennyson said of love: that it is better to have lost in love than never to have loved at all. I think the same is true here. Perhaps your hopes will be dashed. Perhaps not. Either way, there is this present moment experience of love, hope, lightness, relief—and that experience is precious.

Try turning your mindfulness to how hope feels in the heart, mind and body. Notice what’s pleasant, and not so pleasant. And when the mind gets running on the “story”—that is, the details, positive or negative, about the pandemic, politics, or whatever—just notice that it’s doing that, and come back to the present moment. Then you can start enjoying again!

Okay, but what about that heartbreak, though? Is Tennyson really right? Or would it be better not to hope at all, and save yourself the inevitable letdown?

Here, contemplative traditions have at least two very different answers.

One is, indeed, to be skeptical of hope. This view, found in various philosophical and contemplative traditions, says that Tennyson is wrong. Actually, these traditions say, it would be better not to have loved or hoped, because the loss is inevitable and painful. When we indulge in hope, our minds construct fantasies about the future that are not going to come to pass. It would be far better, in this view, to simply notice hope when it arises, and let go of it just like you let go of a distracting thought when you’re sitting in meditation.

I suspect most of us don’t love this approach. It can seem dour, even inhuman. 

Then again, if you’ve had your heart broken—if you’ve lost a loved one to death, or experienced profound loss or grief—you might appreciate the wisdom of detaching a bit from hope. Sometimes, choosing not to indulge in hope can be the self-compassionate thing to do. Just in the last year, many of us have been hurt by hoping that things were finally getting better—until they got worse again. So, there is some wisdom in settling back. Maybe, you might say to yourself, I’ll be just a little less enthusiastic, a little more cautious.

Once again, mindfulness can be your ally here. Take another look at the feeling of hope. Are you noticing any anxiety in the mix, too? Are you noticing yourself fantasizing perhaps too much (like, planning that Spring vacation when you don’t have a vaccine appointment yet), setting yourself up for disappointment? It might be time to step back.

The key is to do so with compassion, not judgment. Just like when you’re distracted in meditation, tone matters. You could mentally slap yourself and scold yourself for being foolish. But a more effective, compassionate, and kind approach would be to just say to yourself, patiently, “Let’s wait and see.” As I’ve said before, kicking your own butt is not the way to happiness.

Finally, there is another view, also found in numerous philosophical and contemplative traditions, which we might call Tennyson-Plus. Yes, heartbreak and disappointment are inevitable. It’s part of life – the first noble truth, the existential reality of the human condition. But, this view holds, it’s possible to surf the waves of emotion with an attitude of freedom and liberation, simply by seeing that these waves all come and go, that they’re not the One And True Answer To Everything, and that they’re all part of the same ocean in the end.

What does that mean? It means holding both the joy of hope and the knowledge that all hopes get disappointed to some extent. (Even if you get that perfect job, it will have some downsides. Even if you meet that perfect person, they won’t be perfect.) With any luck, our hopes will come to more fruition than ruin—but then, that’s just another hope, isn’t it?

Surfing the waves like this takes practice. It may sound like getting the best of both worlds—both the joy of hope and protection from getting hurt—but it’s a subtle move of the heart. It requires holding contradictory truths at the same time: form and emptiness, hope and the futility of hope, engagement with the world and a certain amount of detachment from it. And it takes equanimity to accept the eventual heartbreak with the same attitude as the joy.

As you’ve doubtless already surmised, all three approaches to joy—enjoying, detaching, and surfing—have value and validity. Which one to take depends on you, on the moment, and on the circumstances. 

But while they differ in some ways, they share in common the value of self-compassion. Whether you choose to ride your hopes or step back from them, be kind to yourself, with a mindful heart as your friend.