Hope is a Verb, Hope is a Virtue
Living in possibility
It’s the season for hope. The old year is gone, the new one full of possibility. Predictions are made, resolutions formed. Both are likely to fail within weeks – and we know they will – but making them remains seductive, and the energy they bring is welcome.
Hope has many faces. Recently I learned the adage “Hope is a verb,” and welcomed it. In the face of bad news, it advises, do something. Write a letter, donate to a cause, help someone.
Taking action can keep hope alive, especially specific, goal-oriented, hopes. Immigrants are being treated badly? Help out at a refugee center. Sometimes a specific goal is, or seems, out of reach, but a wider one is probably in sight. I got through the Trump years not only by writing postcards but also by helping register voters, whatever their party. The point was to strengthen democracy.
I want to widen the lens in a different way, and talk about a kind of hope, not goal-oriented, which underlies almost everything we do. It’s a virtue, in fact an ur-virtue, making most of the other virtues possible. I call it open hope. It involves doing something, as specific hopes do, but in a quite different way.
Open hope is a stance toward the world: the constant awareness that always, somewhere, something welcome is about to happen. In one sense, that point is trivial. In the vast complexity of a constantly changing world, of course something good will emerge somewhere. What makes open hope desirable, in fact a virtue, is the habitual awareness of that simple truth, and a resulting emotional balance.
Open hope is the negation of despair and cynicism. But it is not self-deception. It does not claim, for instance, that good always outweighs evil. That’s not true. Nor is open hope the belief that in the end, good will triumph. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t.
Open hope does not involve yearning for a particular result. This is its deepest difference from ordinary hope.
Open hope is the complement of realism. Realism guards against overestimating the probability of good; open hope guards against minimizing it.
Realism keeps us from underestimating problems; open hope keeps us from overestimating them.
Open hope is a virtue. That word’s meaning has weakened over time, but philosophers remember that its root, vir, refers to character and strength. We define virtue as a disposition, a habit, acquired over time. Some people are born with a sunny disposition — they’re lucky. But a virtue is never just a gift of nature. Virtues are deliberately cultivated habits of mind and action, fostered because they enrich life -- one’s own, and the community’s.
Open hope, as a virtue, is the habitual awareness that good things (pleasing, or admirable, or beautiful) lurk everywhere; that what lies ahead is uncertain; and therefore, that there’s always a possibility of something both new and good.
Open hope is the awareness of possibility.
This awareness enriches life by keeping us calmer, by guarding against hysteria and despair. Those emotions are contagious, and so open hope protects those around us as well. The virtue makes it easier to see the world clearly. Only against a background of hope can I bear to know about the violence in Gaza, about addiction and homelessness here, about my good friend’s terminal cancer.
Religion, in many of its forms, offers that kind of hope: Someone is in charge, it will all be made right in the end. But that assurance depends on belief, which can’t simply be chosen. For me and many others, it’s not available. How do the rest of us nurture open hope?
Here’s what I do.
To begin with, I curate my news. Not in the obvious sense, by avoiding bad news; nor by focusing on good news. Instead, I avoid “breaking news” and headlines. I skim the incessant coverage of Trump’s legal battles, noting the headlines but moving on. I’ll read Poland’s shift away from authoritarianism, and why body cams haven’t lessened police violence, and so on. It’s easy to be selective with print media, harder with streaming media; but even there one can choose. Both NPR and PBS, for instance, offer ways to make playlists.
Ending the day with a grateful review of what went well, the small, reliable pleasures we take for granted, also helps. Nicholas Kristoff ended 2023 with just such a list, for the world.
Kristoff: This Was a Terrible Year, and Also Maybe the Best One Yet
I avoid predictions, since they’re so often so wrong. A year ago most experts predicted a recession; instead, the economy is vigorous. And did anyone predict the present savagery in the Middle East? But it’s not just that predictions fail. I avoid them because they’re usually about headline events, not about the steadier, undramatic, parts of life. Open hope requires that we keep paying attention to it all.
Finally, the sorts of actions that preserve specific, goal-oriented, hopes also protect open hope. Action reminds us of possibility.
Open Hope does not sustain illusions. It promotes an inner balance, allowing one to survive while still seeing the world as it is. It does not pretend that good always outweighs evil. Instead, the virtue keeps us aware that the balance of each constantly changes. That, in fact, the balance is not just between good and evil but between joy and sadness, success and failure, love and hate. Open hope is the bone-deep knowledge that in most situations something good is possible; and that whatever happens tomorrow, it will not endure forever.
BTW: I’m returning to my earlier, twice-monthly, schedule. See you in two weeks. Happy 2024!
I am hit emotionally when viewing the news, which is why I prefer to read selectively but widely. On the other hand, I may miss seeing moments of great tidings and joy which would fill me with hope. Doing something for others, even if only with a smile, is my way out.
Wonderfully written, and wonderfully timed for the new year. Open Hope certainly is a virtue we should habituate. It does strike me that moral luck plays a role in who has the leeway to cultivate it. Those of us reading this likely all do but too often squander it. But it would seem too much to ask of people who are starving, or pulling the dead bodies of their children out of the bombed-out rubble of their former home. This role of moral luck does not diminish the power of the blog. Rather, it suggests that we must cultivate open hope not only for our own personal moral equilibrium, but also vicariously to hold out hope on behalf of people understandably incapable of it now.