Day 30: Hope for the Future
How do we have hope for the future even when things don't feel very hopeful?
Dear Friends,
Over the past thirty days, we’ve focused our attention on hope. When I proposed this series, I did it because I needed it—I needed to find a way to feel hopeful as we turned the corner on 2024 and faced an uncertain future over the next few years. There were times this month when I wanted to give up, when I had nothing more to say, when I didn’t feel like saying it. But I’m proud of the fact that I stuck with it, because we know that persistence is an essential ingredient in molding what we hope for into reality.
I want to thank you for staying with me over the course of this month. I know that some of you fell behind and are feeling guilty about that. No need for guilt! Read the posts as they call to you. You can access all of them here.
Today I want to do three things:
Review what we’ve learned together about hope.
Take a look into the long-term future.
Reflect on the most important things we can do in the short-term, i.e., over the next four years, to improve people’s lives.
What We’ve Learned about Hope
In the first post in the series, Day 1: What Does It Mean to Have Hope? I wrote,
Over the next thirty days, I would like to engage you in a conversation about hope, hope’s twin cousins, resilience and renewal, and maybe a little commitment thrown in for good measure. How do we work to change the world in the face of so much adversity? How do we renew our spirits and heal ourselves and each other, so we have the energy to put ourselves where we’re most needed? How do we know where we’re most needed?
I also reminded you that none of us has to do whatever’s required of us alone, but that doing something is essential. I wrote:
As you begin this journey, remember, you don’t have to do it all. Let me say again, “You are not alone!” All you have to do is what you can do, and nothing more. We’ll do the rest. The only caveat is that, in the words of Michelle Obama, you must “do something!”
We learned that in order to find hope, we have to “cultivate hopefulness” (Day 2: The Heart of Hope). It doesn’t magically appear without intention. To be hopeful, we must make an effort to be hopeful. Related to that, in Day 3: Infinite Hope and Day 4: Hope Requires Action, we learned that hope is useless without action. Without hope we have no reason to take action and without action, there is no hope.
In Day 5: Hope Illustrated, I shared how nature grounds me and gives me hope for the future and invited you to find hope in nature, too. Then, we learned what we can do to grow hope by building a wider, more inclusive community in my wife Wendy DeGroat’s post: Day 7: Draw the Circle Wide.
Day 8: Lift Me Up to the Light of Change, Day 9: Creativity as a Path to Hope, and Day 14: Expressing Yourself is a Sign of Hope (from guest contributor Julie Snider) all emphasized how music and the other creative arts are acts of resistance against hopelessness. I wrote:
When we create, we’re actively shaping a narrative of hope, one that resists despair and embraces the potential for growth and change.
We also learned in Day 10: How Resilience Intertwines with Hope, how cultivating resilience girds us against hopelessness, and in Day 11: Imperfect Hope that we do not have to perfectly hopeful all the time. We circled back to this theme in Day 28: Start with Hope, Then Add Grit when guest contributor, VK Lynne shared for “a bedrock in something bigger than ourselves is what maintains a foundation for the fortress that hope builds.”
In Day 18: Practicing Hope, we’re reminded that just like becoming a champion athlete, hope takes practice. And even if we aren’t perfect at it, even if we make mistakes, if we lead with love, hope will find a way (Day 12: Lead with Love and Hope Will Follow).
I encouraged all of us to share hope with others in Day 15 Spreading Hope, by reminding others—people close to us and passing acquaintances—that we see them, appreciate them, and love them.
In Day 16: Hope Lights the Way, Archbishop Desmond Tutu reminds us that “Hope is being able to see light despite all the darkness,” and Day 17: A Hope in Hell reminds us that without hell there would be no hope. The resilient, the creative, those who love will eventually find the light—not an easy thing to do, but one that challenges us to try, no matter what.
As we celebrated the Winter Solstice together on Day 21: Did You Maintain Hope? guest contributor Dorothy Fillmore explored the idea through poetry that finding balance between light and dark is essential to maintaining hope.
We then learned that hope is not purely an emotion—it’s a psychological process that involves cognition, emotion, and behavior. We also learned in Day 19: When Hope's the Last Thing You're Feeling, that hope differs from optimism in one important way:
Optimism is a general expectation that good things will happen.
Hope is more active and specific, requiring both belief in the possibility of a positive outcome and a plan to achieve it.
In the story I shared of the 100-year-old woman I called Grace in Day 22: A Realistic Hope, we learned that hope expects us to be realistic. This story resonated with many of you because Grace demonstrated so clearly that despite, or maybe because of, her years, she had a sparkle that emanated hope, but it was a hope grounded in realism. When telling me about praying to Jesus, she said, “I don't ask him for anything anymore. I just thank him.” It doesn’t make sense to hope for things that are impossible to achieve but, as Grace exemplified, it makes perfect sense to stay hopeful even when there’s little time left to live.
In Day 23: Anchoring Hope in Values, we focused on how values allow us to navigate uncertainty, even when external circumstances feel beyond our control. I encouraged you to write your own core intentions and develop a goal or two for each one. They make great New Years’ resolutions!
On Christmas Eve, I invited you into silence with me: Day 24: Finding Hope in Silence. Sometimes words are better left unsaid. Maintaining silence makes it possible to hear the Spirit, your soul, nature, your inner calling, whatever centers you.
A good friend of mine, Leon Spencer, taught me that, as activists, we have to celebrate our successes, even if they’re incremental wins, and what better time to do that than on Christmas: Day 25: Celebrating Hope?
It’s also important to give ourselves permission to relax, reflect, and dream so that hope can find a place inside of us. In Day 26: Relaxing into Hope, I invited you to let in a little joy.
And finally, I urged us all to take the long view when we think about hope. In Day 29: How to Keep a Hope-Filled Perspective, I looked at some of the incredible things we accomplished in the last twenty-five years and encouraged us to look well into the future to find and maintain hope. For what feels hopeless if we look just as far as next year, takes on a new meaning if we lengthen our view.
What’s in Store for Us in the Next Twenty-Five Years
In yesterday’s post, I wrote that chances are fairly high that I won’t live to see the half-century mark. I never count myself out but making it to 95 years old feels like a stretch to me. Regardless, what I do today, and tomorrow, and next week will have consequences for those who are alive in 2050.
The future has always fascinated me, so in a lengthy AI conversation with Chat GPT, this is what I learned is probable over the next twenty-five years.
Technology will continue to weave itself seamlessly into our daily routines, with advancements like artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and brain-computer interfaces reshaping how we work, learn, and connect. Yet, these same innovations may deepen inequalities, as access to cutting-edge tools and education will continue to remain uneven—unless, that is, we work to change that.
Self-driving vehicles and sustainable public transit will make cities quieter and cleaner, but they could also disrupt millions of jobs in transportation and logistics. Meanwhile, breakthroughs in renewable energy like nuclear fusion and advanced solar technologies will help reduce reliance on fossil fuels. This transition, however, may spark economic upheaval in regions dependent on traditional energy industries.
I read last week that the county I live in, Chesterfield County, Virginia, will be the site of a nuclear fusion plant by 2030—five years from now! —marking the first time fusion power will be made available in the world at grid scale. What will that mean for my community and for my state that still has a significant coal mining economy, producing $2.9 billion of coal annually? In addition, Virginia has the nation's largest coal port complex and is the leading exporter of U.S. coal. These are questions that must be explored now and not after people are thrown out of their jobs.
In addition to new forms of energy, smarter cities, reforestation projects, and climate innovations like carbon capture might help reverse some of the environmental damage we’ve done. Still, the path to sustainability won’t be easy, requiring global cooperation and confronting industries and citizens resistant to change.
Healthcare will also undergo a revolution by 2050, with personalized medicine, gene editing, and regenerative therapies tackling diseases we once thought incurable, but these advancements raise difficult ethical questions about access and affordability. People may live longer, healthier lives thanks to these technologies (maybe I will make it to 95!), yet longer lifespans could strain already overburdened social systems.
Socially, as global connectivity continues to blur cultural lines, we’ll continue to face growing pains in defining identity and equity in an increasingly digital world. In an interesting development, medical advancements might make physical gender transitions more seamless and customizable, extending to changes in chromosomes, reproductive abilities, and secondary sexual characteristics. This could broaden societal understanding of gender far beyond binary categories, expanding current definitions of gender as a spectrum of identities. But how will these dramatic changes be accepted by those who oppose them today? Can we win over hearts and minds to the idea that we each should be free to control our own bodies and how we identify?
These are just a few of the changes we’re likely to see in the next twenty-five years. Will we finally elect a woman president in the US? Will peace descend on the Middle East, Ukraine, and the estimated thirty-nine other countries that are currently at war? Will we learn to treat each other with respect and dignity? How will people adjust to the fast pace of technological changes? Will the rich keep getting richer and the poor poorer?
The answers to these questions are in our control—if we decide to embrace them.
What Can We Do to Sustain Hope?
Where we decide to put our energy will make all the difference to how we keep hope alive. Given the realities of the newly elected President who is no-doubt going to create chaos at the federal and international level, the most important and significant impact we can have is local. By concentrating on grassroots initiatives, we can create meaningful change that will help us navigate humanely through the next twenty-five years.
Don’t feel like you need to change everything. You can’t. I promise you that thinking that you can control this President or Congress will only lead to despair. Instead put your energy into creating impact where you can—at the local and state level. That’s the best way to protect your community from the negative impacts of initiatives coming from Washington, and the best way to keep you feeling hopeful!
Today’s Reflection
Take another look at the twenty-five year vision above. Are there issues you see that you feel motivated to work on? Technology equity, ethical considerations of AI, new modes of transportation, new forms of energy, environmental protections, healthcare access, education reforms, or maybe LGBTQ equity and rights. If so, find some other folks in your community who are working on these issues and join them.
Here are a few more ideas for essential actions you could take to make a significant difference in these times:
Strengthen community supports to provide essential resources like food, housing assistance, and healthcare access to vulnerable communities.
Focus on state and local advocacy to elect progressive leaders and pass progressive policies related to housing, education, and policing, rapid transit, and other issues affecting your community.
Work to ensure state civil and human rights protections are in place to buffer against restrictive federal legislation.
Support workers and small businesses to address economic inequality, living wage ordinances, and worker protections.
Educate and mobilize communities by organizing workshops on civic engagement, voter rights, racial justice, healthcare, climate change, and advocacy strategies.
Build community resilience for climate change by advocating for local clean energy projects and launching neighborhood initiatives for urban gardening, native plant restoration, and energy efficiency retrofits.
Because we know that creativity is essential to maintaining hope, create opportunities for artists, writers, and other creatives to show, perform, and make their work available to larger audiences.
These are just a few of the things that might call to you. The most important thing is to find something that you’re excited about and do that thing. Don’t worry if it feels like what you’re doing is a drop in the bucket—all it takes is a lot of drops like yours for the bucket to overflow. As long as we can count on each and every drop, we can create a river and change the world. And that’s the best way I know to sustain hope!
Happy New Year to you! May 2025 be more than you imagine it to be. I hope this series has given you some ideas to inspire you, some things to challenge you, and some actions to take. It has me!
Please share whatever you come up with or additional thoughts you have about hope in troubled times. We need each other for this to work and hope to stay alive.
Yours in hope,
Annette
Notes
Nuclear Fusion Plant: https://www.governor.virginia.gov/newsroom/news-releases/2024/december/name-1037752-en.html
Countries Currently at War 2024:
https://www.datapandas.org/ranking/countries-currently-at-war
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-currently-at-war
Thank you for unpacking so many aspects of life to which hope can, and must, be applied. Your research and thoughtful presentation of critical social, environmental, and technological problems and possible solutions is truly inspiring!