There is hope...

I don't want to get into where lack of hope stems from… it is contextual and personal.  When one is hopeful, we feel connected and empowered to act.  When we feel hopeless, it is as a result of a lack of connection, of inaction.  It should be noted that I too feel the impact of Doom and Gloom.  It seems everything that I read these days is filled with exactly all of the things that we are doing wrong, and how we’ve reached the point of no return.  Just look at this recent TEDtalk and set of slides here

Where can this hope come from?  It seems that if we couple all of the hope we have in this world with all of the areas of despair, that the list of despair would be overwhelming!  Even from a scientific standpoint and looking at hard facts, the implications of what we read can certainly lead to feelings of despair.  I guess what the world needs is to find a way to balance the reality we face with hope.  Lets face it – the doom and gloom camp is well occupied, with many not just pitching tents but also pouring foundations and raising flags.  Swaisgood would state rather that there needs to be a movement to populate the other side, the side of hope. 

I find that I need to do this in my own experiences as well.  Every year at a certain time, my students come to me with long faces, all realizing and feeling a sense of futility, of abandon, of hopelessness in light of what they have come to know of their world.  They ask me what its all about, why we should be doing anything if it is indeed all futile, and why they are in the environmental program.  I admit to them that I do not have all the answers, and maybe on the answer for them, but share with them some of the inspiration that keeps me going. 

Our technology is what got us into this mess – let us give it that opportunity to get us out.  What I hope I am giving my students is not necessarily a false sense of hope, which can be worse than no hope at all.  Humans are awesome, and if we spent more time in nature, and less time analyzing the facts that indicate that we are failing nature, maybe we can rekindle that hope, and collectively find a way forward in optimism. 

Sure – the above is mostly sports oriented.  Imagine if we could make the environment as exciting and sexy as trick-biking!

We need that hope in our work as environmental practitioners – in fact it is essential, or our credibility would be lost (Lidicker).  As Swaisgood said – hope may not be the most logical alternative, but the necessary one.  Our heroes of the future will be the ones that came from the focus on nature, not with a focus on despair.

Why the source of hope?  Why not just get into bed and wait for the end?  I recall fondly some of the facts around a great inventor.  He was told he was “slow” in primary school, and so ended up being home-schooled by his mother.  He did his first experiments in an abandoned baggage car at a railway station, until it burnt to the ground, losing all of his work.  He was deaf in one ear, and still, discouragement and despair did not set in.  Again years later as an adult, a fire broke out in his organization’s compound, destroying 13 buildings and again losing thousands of hours of ongoing research and discovery.  Still, he resolved to rebuild. 

2332 patents worldwide are accredited to his name.

Accredited with the invention of the light bulb, he had more than 10,000 failures along the path of invention.  Still, his perspective on the matter is what can bring us hope.  Thomas Edison is quoted as saying, “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”

Though we may at this junction be at that point of 10,000 failures, we need to retain hope that the success may be in the next attempt.  I think it works for my students.  Many come away from the session with a renewed optimism, one that re-crystalizes their reasons for being in the program.  Grades improve, and overall connection within the group improves.  It is this transformation that actually gives me hope, and the energy to do it all again the next year.  Maybe on a small level I’ve initiated something that will radiate.