Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up.
Wake up and read the news each morning and you'll be forgiven for feeling anything from overwhelm, despair, despondence or a plethora of other somewhat helpless emotions. Story after story of things seemingly falling apart.
These are the symptoms of a world in crisis.
Of course they're miserable. There's not many things out there which sound great when you just list all the symptoms of ill-health. And that is what our news stories are doing - shining a light on the illness of our world.
Yet for every symptom, there is a root cause.
For every illness there is a treatment.
For every illness there is a prevention.
Wake up in the morning and read the stories of folks working to create a healthier world and you'd be forgiven for feeling hopeful each morning. There's abundant energy to be drawn from tales of good people all around us working to create brighter futures for people and planet.
These are the stories I'm interested in: the stories of folks around the world working to treat the symptoms, to address the root causes, to create healthier alternatives for how we can live well together. These stories are just as real, just as prevalent and just as significant a marker of the state of humanity. In many ways these stories are even more real as they show what happens when that groundswell of goodness that lies within us all is given the opportunity to flourish.
Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up.
The recognition that healthier futures won't come unless we move ourselves towards them has been a powerful lesson in my own life. I draw daily on the work of Joanna Macy's Active Hope to welcome the process of hope into my life, work and purpose, buoyed constantly through recognising how many millions of people out there are 'doing something' to co-create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.
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TOP TIP: Shift your daily news feed to Positive News (or other similar news sources) and feed yourself stories of 'the helpers' rather than drowning in the symptoms of our ill-health. It really makes a difference to your nervous system and your outlook on the world.
#activehope #lookforthehelpers #feedyourgoodness #hope #change #brighterfuture