Grab a journal. Even if you think you don’t want to or it feels hard, I promise it will deliver. Pen to paper, it is old school, it is nostalgic, it is something to see the ink or that grey lead meet the page, it it not nothing and that is something these days.
Every Friday I explore a conversation around hope in the Substack chat thread for my paid subscribers. I am pretty new still to the stacks so my engagement in the chat is low and that is okay because talking about hope every Friday feels imperative right now for my brain and the neural pathways I choose to trot along.
Speaking of neural pathways, how incredible is the brain? I read Michael Pollen’s book, ‘How to Change Your Mind’ (highly recommend) and while I devoured all the info and history of fungi and psychedelics, even more I loved learning about the brain and neuroplasticity:
In a nutshell, neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to learn and adapt. Until relatively recently, experts believed that our brains were fixed by the end of adolescence and that, in terms of neurons, it was all downhill from there. But the latest research has proved the opposite: that our brains can actually grow and change throughout adulthood. That is, if we treat our neural pathways right. (-Jonathan Thompson, the whole article is here)
So today, let’s talk hope and create new hiking trails to walk along within our brain, shall we? Join me.
Grab your journal:
Take a look around. Where can you see hope? What does it look like, feel like, smell like or even sound like? Allow yourself to be surprised here, just write.
Let’s broaden the lens and take a look back, when was the last time you dipped a toe into hope or hopefulness? Was it fruitful, scary, fun, energizing, softening - perhaps all the emotions on the spectrum back to back? List them out, feel them out. And then what happened? Can you learn and then leave that moment back there, yes or no?
Land in the now. What does hope mean to you today? Let’s be real, hope is vulnerable, hope is not cost-free ever, and hope is energy in motion. When you know that, can you be brave anyways to hope again and again? Then, can we hope together?
For the list makers like me, start the bullet points and write our where you want to be hopeful. See what happens.
I see hope when I ask my kid to kiss his head and he lets me
I see hope when I catch my own reflection in the mirror, older, wiser, less afraid
Hope feels like a pointillist dot of understanding:
we are all here to die
hope is a momentary full acceptance of that fact
If you haven’t read Man’s Search for Meaning - it’s all about Hope basically. The only thing that can NEVER be taken from us!
I see hope in Nature. Blooming flowers. Trees turning green. Snow melting. Rivers flowing. Nature just IS. She always grows, evolves and heals. In time.