Hope at the Crossroads
So. What is the magic of this moment?
I don’t know about you, but on Saturday, when Biden and Harris’ win was announced, I felt a great fear leave my body, an evil weight lift from above the crown of my head and my shoulders. I did not realize how thick, how heavy, how omni-present it had been.
There is much to do yet. There is still so much fear, so many injustices that are now in the light of day. But this can be joyful work…if we allow ourselves to hope.
When I begin a new coaching practice with a leader, it is like opening the pages of a fairytale. I am entering a new world – their world. Their story of challenges and secrets, dark paths and brilliant gifts. Their story, which limits or expands their beautiful potential.
And I know, at the beginning of every story and every coaching journey, there is the call to adventure, that moment when the known world is about to change and we can feel the approach of some greater possibility. Perhaps one we have not let ourselves trust or even imagine before. The work of that moment is to do the sometimes scary work of hoping for more than seems possible.
We are in such a moment, now.
Which is why it is essential that we, the leaders (and by leaders, I mean everyone who would put their shoulder to the wheel of what Joanna Macy calls The Great Turning- the move toward a life-sustaining society) the leaders of this moment must be also willing to hope for more than seems possible.
I was recently talking to one of my clients, stuck in a bad position and trying to imagine whether something better was even possible. “What would it feel like to hope?” I asked. “Oh, it is so scary,” she said. “I have been disappointed so many times before.“
Yes, the voices come, those drums of doom! I am tempted to name some of them here, they emerge day by day, hour by hour, saying that we cannot afford to give attention to hope. I won’t bother. You know them. They say that we must fight now. Those external voices are the drumbeat of crisis that would silence hope in every crucial moment.
But the work of leadership is both external and internal. Brené Brown says that when we begin to hope, to “dare greatly,” our internal voices try to shut it down with “You aren’t good enough,” and if that fails, “Who do you think you are?“ In our world of progressive politics, I’ve seen those who hope big made small when they are told that their hope is “naive.” How many challenges to the status quo has that word defeated by replacing energy with apathy?
But hope is apathy’s antidote. That is what makes it so powerful and so dangerous. It was by daring to hope that 75 million people rose up in this election: the hope that we can be a country where Black Lives Matter and young people have a future and all genders deserve dignity and all people deserve housing and health care and all beings deserve a healthy planet. By the power of hope, and a fever of organizing and the willingness to stand in line for seven hours or more in a pandemic to vote, we defeated a fascist president. I know: the work is far from over. And that is why we must keep our hope, our energy alive.
So now, dear leader, I ask you: what would it be like to allow yourself big hope? Try this. Take two minutes (not such a long time in a crossroads moment such as this one.) Take three deep breaths and press your feet into the floor. Feel the soles of your feet connecting to this earth that we love, feel your breath connecting you those who are behind you- those who have taught you, those who inspire you: the poets and the activists, the organizers and artists and the warriors for justice and beauty and life. Breathe in their courage. Breathe out your love for those who will come after us. Think of them as you dream or speak or write the answer to this question: “What are you willing to hope for, now?”