Hope is a Verb

Perhaps it’s because, since I was three, I heard women. I heard them roaring. In numbers “too big to ignore” (thanks, Helen Reddy). Perhaps due to the time of my youth, I always assumed that the “moral arc,” though long, bent “toward justice” (Martin Luther King, Jr.) For most of my life, achieving justice for all seemed to be the norm. I assumed my reality was universal, and with the exception of a small contingent of society focused on the past, civil rights would continue to be expanded as time went on.

I didn’t expect the pendulum to swing in the other direction.

Liberal democracy was the hero and winner of World War II. We wrote the Japanese Constitution, requiring the implementation of capitalist and democratic ideals in their postwar reconstruction. Germany, and particularly the city of Berlin, were a live lab experiment that proved the dominance of capitalism over communism. And the West – the liberal democracies of the West – won that experiment unequivocally.

So how is it that less than one lifetime later (mine specifically, 56-years-old at this point) so many in my own country have made an about face, and now lump liberal democracy in with extreme leftist ideologies like communism? And are pulling back on equal rights, most blatantly with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.

I tap into my child of the ME Generation, 70s philosophy, “I’m OK, You’re OK” upbringing, and calm myself with a new book by Emily Elhers, “Hope is a Verb: Six Steps to Radical Optimism When the World Seems Broken.” These steps revive my faith in humanity (which HOPEfully trickles down to our democracy):

STEP 1: Stop Freaking

Out.

STEP 2: Change the Story.

STEP 3: Set Your Inner

Compass.

STEP 4: Own Your Power.

STEP 5: Just Start.

STEP 6: Find Your people.

Step six may be the most important. When you find your people, the support of your community offers strength by reminding you that you are not alone. The bottom line is, Hope is a verb.

So rather than throwing your hands up in disbelief as you watch the world you once knew slip away, one Supreme Court decision at a time, tap into those who came before us, whose struggle was actually more real… until now. It’s time to put our money where our mouth is, and the only way to garner the strength for that is to actually believe we can. We cannot stand idly by and hope, we must realize that hope is a verb, and we must actively believe, stop freaking out, find our people, and CHANGE THE STORY. Just start.