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“A continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking,” wrote the lay theologian and children’s author CS Lewis in 1952. “Hope is one of the theological virtues . . . Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.”
The idea that hope, far from being some kind of foolish or self-indulgent emotion, should be considered a virtue is one that has existed since the beginnings of Christianity. It was Jesus’s apostle Paul who first wrote of hope as an enduring virtue in his letters to the Corinthians. The medieval theologian St Thomas Aquinas described it as “a future good, difficult but possible to attain . . . by means of the divine assistance”.
Hope also represents the core message of Easter: the resurrection of Jesus Christ — a triumph of life over death — shows Christians that, even during the darkest times, light can suddenly appear, and that new beginnings and even miracles are possible. In Islam and Judaism it is taught as a virtue, too.
And yet in our largely secular modern society, the hopeful person is rarely spoken of as the virtuous one. They are more likely to be called foolish — being cynical and pessimistic tends to be regarded as a sign of intelligence and worldliness, while expressing any kind of positive vision for the future gets dismissed as naivety or, worse, complacency.
But there are reasons to be hopeful, and not just because it is possible that things — some things, at least — will turn out all right in the end. No, the very act of hoping is good for us on both a psychological and a physiological level: studies have repeatedly linked a greater sense of hope to a lower risk of cancer, chronic illness, and all-cause mortality.
I use the word “act” deliberately here. Hope is often conflated with optimism, but there are some important distinctions between the two, as Edward Brooks, executive director of the Oxford Character Project, who is writing a book on the subject, tells me. “Optimism is an expectation of a positive future,” he says. “Hope is a habit of focusing action and attention on a future that is good and that is difficult but yet possible to attain.”
In other words, optimism — while it brings health and happiness benefits of its own, and tends to be more motivating than pessimism when used in messaging — is a much more passive thing; some people seem to be born with it and others without. Hoping is a choice to focus on the possibility, however faint, of some future good, and crucially involves individual and collective agency. Hope carries with it the conviction that we can take action that makes our desired future more likely.
Discussions about instilling hope can quickly become wishy-washy. But one only has to look across the Atlantic for concrete evidence that messages of hope can be hugely powerful politically. Back in 2008, Barack Obama — who had two years earlier published a book under the title The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream — was voted into the White House on the back of a hugely hopeful slogan: “Yes we can.”
And yet while hope that a better future is possible might be baked into the very notion of “progressivism”, it was Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement that offered voters the positive vision for the future this time around — however wrong that vision might have been. Conversely, it was the Democrats’ focus on narratives of victimhood rather than empowerment, and on attacking Trump rather than coming up with an alternative positive vision, that paved the way for his return.
The importance of politicians conveying hope is a universal phenomenon: a huge Gallup study this year found that of four core needs that people mention in relation to their leaders, hope was the most important — well ahead of trust, compassion and stability. Another Gallup study found that 69 per cent of employees who strongly agreed their leaders made them “feel enthusiastic about the future” felt engaged at work, compared with just 1 per cent who disagreed.
There is of course a risk that by focusing so much on the positive, you are blind to the risks of things going badly — Trump’s “liberation day” serves as a good example. But hoping need not be complacent: we should consider it, as Aristotle did, the mean between the vices of presumption and despair.
Hope is, as the American poet Emily Dickinson wrote so beautifully, “the thing with feathers, That perches in the soul”. We must nurture and protect this delicate thing. It’s the hope, after all, that saves you.
jemima.kelly@ft.com
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