Taking responsibility to keep hope possible

Are you overwhelmed with the state of the world? Do you feel isolated in your emotions as the range of possible futures gets more narrow? Is lockdown getting on your nerves? Do you grief over the death of a future you wanted to live? Do you feel helpless and have a hard time trusting things will get better? I suggest the practice of Active Hope.

Active Hope is a practice. Like yoga, it’s something we exercise, and not something we have or don’t have. As a yogini, I unfold my yoga mat in the morning and start my practice. I do some pranayama, followed by asanas, and then I finish with meditation. It’s in my recurrent showing up to practice that I ground myself in the practice of yoga. And so it is with Active Hope. It is something that we nourish by practicing, and in that showing up we ground it in us and allow it to empower our life. As a result, you will find yourself deeply rooted in the world.

Active hope is not about hoping for things to turn out the way we want them to, and just take a passive role as we hope. It’s rather about believing things will go a certain way because our hearts believe in the values that guide that outcome, and therefore we do our part in taking the world in that direction.

We are guided by intention: we get clear on the values we want to nourish into the future, and we do actions that bring those values alive. We don’t stop to weigh our chances, choosing to proceed only if it looks possible or likely. Instead, we strengthen our intention, and we let it guide us forward.

Active Hope: how to face the mess we’re in without going crazy, is the tittle of a powerful book written by Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone. The book extends on the transformational work developed by Joanna Macy in the 70’s known as the Work That Reconnects, and Deep Ecology. Active Hope was first published in 2012, and its second edition will come out in 2021, and will include adaptations that meet the new reality of life one decade after the book was first written. Stay tuned for that!

I discovered Deep Ecology in 2013, when I was living in the Findhorn community in Scotland. We were a group of 25 people, living together for 5 weeks, learning Ecovillage Design. We learned from our own experience that we would need to look deeper into our feelings of despair if we wanted to ground yourselves in strength and motivation that allowed us to face the reality of our world situation. To design for sustainability and to be part of creating the conditions for regeneration, we had to process the feelings we had moving in us. We knew we could not allow ourselves to go numb with all the madness.

After that I studied Active Hope with Chris Johnstone in Scotland, and then continued to join his trainings online after I left. In 2020, in preparation for the new edition of Active Hope, Chris put together a group of people on online gatherings where him and Joanna explored the Deepening of Active Hope. It has been a huge joy to be part of this group! All our calls were a life-giving part of my pandemic experience. I am so grateful for them! Joining the Active Hope community changed my life, it shapes the way I see the world, the way I see the future, and it supports my actions every day. I feel nourished to give and receive in this beautiful network of people intentionally building hope.

“Active Hope is not wishful thinking. Active Hope is not waiting to be rescued by some saviour. Active Hope is waking up to the beauty of life on whose behalf we can act. We belong to this world. The web of life is calling us forth at this time. We’ve come a long way and are here to play our part. With Active Hope we realise that there are adventures in store, strengths to discover, and comrades to link arms with.

Active Hope is a readiness to discover the strengths in ourselves and in others; a readiness to discover the reasons for hope and the occasions for love. A readiness to discover the size and strength of our hearts, our quickness of mind, our steadiness of purpose, our own authority, our love for life, the liveliness of our curiosity, the unsuspected deep well of patience and diligence, the keenness of our senses, and our capacity to lead. None of these can be discovered in an armchair or without risk.”

- Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone

When facing the state of the world in 2021, the challenges we face can feel too daunting to think about. More difficult still to feel them in our hearts. Threats to democracy, desertification, floods, the disappearance of thousands of species, the possibility of our own mass extinction, economic upheaval, gigantic social inequality, a global pandemic… a state of planetary emergency of overwhelming proportions. It can be tempting to listen to the voice that says “Don’t think about it, it’s too depressing” or “Don’t focus so much on the negative.” The problem with doing that is that it closes down our conversations, it stops us from thinking about the truth of the situation together. It stops us from feeling things as they are. And how can we even begin to address the mess we’re in if we consider it too depressing to think about?

When we go beyond being numbed to the situation, when we engage with the various tragedies unfolding in our world, it feels overwhelming. We wonder if there is even anything we can do about it that can make a change. But as we take that step, when we actually face the reality of the situation, we take a crucial step. We become part of disintegrating one of the greatest dangers of our time: the paralysis of our response.

So that’s where we start: we acknowledge that our present moment offers us realities that are painful to face, difficult to digest, and very hard to accept. We use this as the starting point of a journey that makes us stronger, that connects us and reinforces our aliveness. Through this journey we generate, we share, and we receive back the gift of Active Hope. 

With the practice of Active Hope we strengthen and support our intention to act, so that we can best play our part, whatever that may be, in the healing of our world. Active Hope expands our ability to respond creatively to the crises of our time.

If we see the pain we feel with the state of the world as feedback from the wider system, we can see it as a natural response to something that went wrong. Then we can see how that pain is telling us that the disconnected state we live in is not working. We can hear what the pain is trying to tell us: we need to operate differently, we need to connect as people, reconnect with nature, and change the way we are treating our environment, which is not an external thing, but something we are part of.

If you are feeling lost and overwhelmed with the world situation, not knowing what to do for life on Earth, I invite you to explore the practice of Active Hope.This is a deeply transformational practice that has the power to wake us up to the present moment with all that is part of it. It supports us addressing the big problems of the world in ways that are nourishing and encouraging. It changes us, and shakes us up to the reality that we are all here together, our actions matter, and what we choose to do now shapes the future. Our own future and the future of the generations to come.

What to do next? Get the book! Visit the Active Hope website. Visit the Work That Reconnects website. Take a course, have private sessions. Do some research online. Join a local group. Strengthen your intention, and let it guide you!