Contemplating hope 2
Hope is not a wing and a prayer. It is a commitment to the future grounded in action.
Hope is a tiny vision that, when taken seriously, when fuelled, expands to fill the mind that spawned it and the body that wants to experience it.
So, think on what is your most urgent need, your most fervent desire, and make a plan to make it happen. Make a five-minute plan or make a five-year plan. But make a plan.
It’s what Dale Spender, an Australian feminist I met decades ago in Edmonton, did when she wanted to quit smoking. Whenever she felt the urge for a smoke — and for many days that urge arose every ten minutes, her plan was to get up, leave the house and walk around the block. She did this until her desire to quit became the reality of her having quit. Her plan was both a 10-minute one and a life-long one, and her originating action was as simple as going for a walk.
For 15-year-old Greta Thunberg, the plan was to sit, alone, outside the Swedish parliament to protest the lack of action on the climate crisis. She felt despair and yet — or, maybe, therefore — she acted. That plan began as a solo act and has ignited a global movement of youth and people of all ages. #FridaysForFuture
For Jane Fonda, the plan was to do something — anything — to draw attention to the climate crisis. Turned out it meant putting her 80-year-old body on the line to risk arrest for committing civil disobedience. Her plan began with a dozen fellow activists gathered on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, DC and has ignited a groundswell of citizens of all ages — and definitely older adults, all willing to engage in civil disobedience to demonstrate the urgent need for action on the climate crisis. #FireDrillFridays
For me, the plan was to help elect a progressive MLA to the Legislature. My hope was for a change in government, which we did not achieve, but my action did help put a feminist politician onto the opposition benches.
Dale Spender changed her own life. I helped change my community’s. Greta and Jane may just change the planet's with theirs.
Hope is the beginning. It sustains the commitment that leads to action. And that action leads to results. But it all starts with that spark in the mind or the heart that knows that something is needed or wanted in order to make the next five minutes or five years or five decades better — for you, your loved ones, or the larger community.
Get your body up off the couch. Put it on the line. Or at least get out and walk around the block.
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A Post a Day in May No. 8: For the past two years, I have posted something to this blog every single day in May. This year, I hope to do it again.
I smile as I read this morning. Being close to two decades older than you, I don't even buy green bananas, nevermind make a five-year plan!
ReplyDeleteI hope for a solution to the big things, like climate control and world hunger, senseless wars and the inhumane way humans treat humans. In reality, I can't do much about those. So I support presidents and senators and representatives and governors, all the way down to small town council persons whose social justice views agree with my own.
That works best from the grass roots approach.
We are coming on a local election here, mayor, school board, city council, that sort of thing. Because of the relative size of the local electorate to the state or national, my vote counts the most in this one. One of the mayoral candidates lives behind me, nice man, nice wife, two adorable boys who repeatedly knock a ball into our garden. His opponent, the incumbent, is under federal indictment for misuse of funds. There shouldn't be any doubt who wins. Both are young, attractive, African-American professionals. But there is huge doubt as the one with the indictment also has the local political machine in her back pocket.
I hope my efforts and the efforts of my friends and of all the people we contact will be enough to elect my neighbor. This is my current save-the-world project, small enough to get my arms around, affordable, physically undemanding.
And soon I will be able to walk around the block.