In her essay “False Hope and Easy Despair,” historian and author Rebecca Solnit speaks to how hope requires action. “Hope” she quotes author Ernst Bloch, “is in love with success rather than failure.”

That seems obvious, but Solnit drives home her point by noting that failure and marginalization are safe. Despair has many causes and varieties.  Denying one’s power and possibility allows us to “shake off” our sense of obligation. We can make our point too easily when the point becomes “the demonstration of one’s own virtue rather than the realization of results.”

On the other hand,

“Hopefulness is risky, since it is after all a form of trust, trust in the unknown and the possible, even in discontinuity.  To be hopeful is to take on a different persona, one that risks disappointment, betrayal…”

Looking through the mist at Lake of the Saints (Photo credit: Dayspring Retreat Center)

I have spent recent weeks studying strategic plans, business models, trends in nonprofit organizations, and other materials that look backward to history to make sense of what’s ahead. They begin by looking backward because, as I’ve said earlier, hope is grounded in memory.  I’ve written my self-assessment as part of our performance review process at work and prepared my personal strategic plan.  In every instance, the best of these documents are built on a hope that demands something of those who would implement them.  As the title of this email suggests, “Hope demands things that despair does not.”

Let’s look to a hope that is in love with success.

Have a good week.

More to come…

DJB