We currently live in the liminal period in between a season of national shutdown and the emerging promise of a return to life as we once knew it.
The memories of how life used to be, with packed and buzzing pubs, hugs galore, business handshakes and foreign holidays, are not so far distant in our past that we have lost them from our social muscle memory.
Who would have thought that four hours sitting in Wetherspoons on a Thursday evening with twelve of your friends would have become something that you day-dreamed about? With the advent of some beautiful sunshine, the possibility of a week on a Mediterranean beach, and being allowed to have some friends over for dinner, Optimism has quickly raised her bright and noble head.
However, media images of the guerrilla warfare currently being fought by the Indian variant of Covid-19 in some parts of the country are causing a resurgence of anxiety among some.
The question on many people’s hearts is: ‘So, are we moving forwards to our freedom, or slipping backwards again into times of restriction?’
How are we to manage our fragile emotions in these days? Should we be positive, and live as if everything will be fine, or is that quite naïve? Perhaps what we need in these times is to nurture the precious virtue of hope.
Wikipedia defines hope as ‘an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one's life or the world at large.’ Hope, however, is not blind faith, but rather a settled expectation that things are ultimately going to head in a better direction.
Exercising our ability to hope is important right now, I suspect, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, hope of a better future is personally life-giving and stops us from shutting down emotionally. As a priest, I have worked with people in all sorts of difficult life situations in which some of them have just given up all hope. I recognise that empty look on a person’s face. When hope expires, despair can soon set in. What often follows is a reduction in interpersonal communication, and the person may stop caring for their physical welfare. I am always amazed at how a minute injection of hope can turn that person around very quickly. Hope in a community is essential to help keep its core temperature at normal, and stop it falling into social and commercial ill-health.
This is not just the power of positive thinking. From a Christian perspective, it is believing by faith that God has already enabled us to be able to do something to improve our situation.
In the Bible we are told that when our hope is in God, He will renew our strength. After 39 years as a Christian, I can testify that this is true.
Secondly, hope can provoke us to attempt endeavours and solutions that we otherwise would not. If we believe that all is going to be well, and we strive forward in that confidence, two positive benefits can arise.
Firstly, our bold attempts may create solutions and options that may help to dissipate the emergency. It is amazing in our human history how many solutions to our great trials and challenges have come out of someone following a wild idea, while infected with hope. Secondly, our bold attempts to succeed can strengthen both us and those around us. Hope is genuinely infectious. When you see the person next to you making proactive steps to move forward, you may also be inspired to try something yourself. So, while still using common sense, let us step out into our futures confident that pleasant and green pastures are before us.