Hope
Cynicism is a hardening, a calcification of the soul. Hope is a stretching of its ligaments, a limber reach for something greater. —Maria Popova
A Fleeting Life | Max Cooper & James Yorkston (Video: Line Rider)
Atul Gawande
On Mortality And Meaning
Jane Goodall, In Memoriam
What It Means To Be Human
Joanna Macy, In Memoriam
Beauty And Wisdom And Courage (And Rilke) To Sustain Us
On Being | Max Cooper & Félix Gerbelot (Official video by Masanobu Hiraoka)
Rebecca Solnit
Falling Together
“There’s a way a disaster throws people into the present and sort of gives them this supersaturated immediacy that also includes a deep sense of connection. It’s as though in some violent gift you’ve been given a kind of spiritual awakening where you’re close to mortality in a way that makes you feel more alive; you’re deeply in the present and can let go of past and future and your personal narrative, in some ways. You have shared an experience with everyone around you, and you often find very direct, but also metaphysical senses of connection to the people you suddenly have something in common with.
“And then oftentimes, the people who do the really important work in disasters, which doesn’t get talked about much, are the neighbors. Who’s going to rescue you when your building collapses? When the ice storm comes and the power goes out? It’s probably going to be the neighbors.
“And so the question is really like two things. One is how can we get there without going through a disaster, and …”
—Rebecca Solnit
HOPE | Max Cooper (Official video by Thomas Vanz)
The Hope Portal, from the On Being Project with Krista Tippett
Hope Portal E1 Krista Tippett
Hope Portal E2 adrienne maree brown
Hope Portal E3 Naomi Shihab Nye
Hope Portal E4 Ocean Vuong
Hope Portal E5 Joanna Macy
Hope Portal E6 Joy Harjo
Hope Portal E7 Ross Gay
When I Sit Alone. In My Thoughts. I Am Crushed. | Max Cooper & Aho Ssan (Video by Simon Kounovsky)
Jason Reynolds
On Hopelessness, The Virtue Of Stamina, And Showing Grace To Ourselves
“The idea of hopelessness as a perennial issue I actually think is a bit disingenuous and unfair, but moments of hopelessness I actually think are human. And I think we all should allow ourselves enough grace to take a moment to catch our breath, believing that the communities that we’ve built, which we should be building, will be there to sort of carry us with their hope until they’re out of breath. And then it’ll be our turn to take the baton and to do the same thing.
“And so and so, as I’ve been sussing it all, that’s kind of where I am. I’m like, All right, I recognize that it’s going to be these kids who are going to take us to the next level if we’re doing our jobs, but it’s going to require a muscular hope. But that which is muscular does not mean that it is always strong. It means it has strength, but it doesn’t mean that it is always strong, right? And there will be moments where I will have to take a beat, and I’m going to be sad, and I’m going to feel hopeless, and I deserve the opportunity to feel that, knowing that there are people around me, strategically put there, people who love me, who will carry me on until I can catch my breath and continue on with a hopeful life, right?
“That feels more human to me than the idea that I’m supposed to just be a beacon of hope all the time. I don’t have it in me. I’d like to believe I do, but I’m a person and life is hard; beyond politics, life is hard, right? And I think that’s where I am, and I deserve that amount of grace, the grace I give these kids as they learn to live as … as they learn to be human, as they learn to be whole, as they grow into adults, as they learn, as they activate their egos, as they learn humility, all the things that we need them to be in order for us to continue on with the world in which we live in a better version of it. I also deserve the same amount of grace. I deserve to give myself the same amount of grace in the moments in which I need it.”
—Jason Reynolds
Pulse At The Centre Of Being | Max Cooper (Official video by Tsz-wing Ho)
Love Is the Motive
Bryan Stevenson with Krista Tippett
“I think a lot of it has to do with how we’re governed, how we’re acculturated. I think in the 1970s, part of what happened is that our political leaders began relying on the politics of fear and anger as a way of shaping policy. And so we declare this misguided war on drugs. We say that people who are drug dependent and drug addicted are criminals, and we’re going to use the criminal justice system to respond to that problem. Now, we could have said and should have said that people suffering from addiction and dependency have a health problem, and we need a health care response. But that’s not going to generate the kind of energy that demonizing people for addiction will.
That’s how we got to the point where we were putting people in prison forever, life without parole, for writing a bad check. I’ve represented people who were serving life without parole for simple possession of marijuana, taking away the minimum age or trying children as adults. When you step back and you think about it, it makes no sense. And there are 13 states today that have no minimum age for trying a child as an adult.
And you can’t really rationalize that unless you are distracted by these narratives of fear and anger. And I think that is part of the condition that gives rise to the brutality and the cruelty that I’ve seen in my work. And of course, when you are governed by fear and anger, when you’re shaped by fear and anger, you tolerate things you would never otherwise tolerate. You accept things you would never otherwise accept.”
—Brian Stevenson
Small Window On The Cosmos | Max Cooper (Official video by Thomas Vanz)
Hope Is A Muscle with Krista Tippett
Hope Is A Muscle, I
Hope Is A Muscle, II
Hope Is A Muscle, III
Towards A Moral Revolution
Jacqueline Novogratz with Krista Tippett
Small Truths And Other Surprises
Jericho Brown with Krista Tippett
The Whole Of Time
Joy Harjo with Krista Tippett
The Story Matrix We’re In
With Joy Harjo
Ebb And Flow | Max Cooper (Official Video by Yoshi Sodeoka)
Other External Links:
“Hopelessness is a luxury.”
—Rebecca Solnit
An interview by writer Marina Espasa
Victoria’s Treaty — Our Shared Future
From the Victorian Government
Treaty, It’s Here
From the First Peoples’ Assembly Of Victoria
Can truth-telling deliver the change needed?
By Bridget Cama, Cheek Media Co.
The Failure of the Voice Referendum
and the Future of Australian Democracy
Edited by Gabrielle Appleby
and Megan Davis, Anthem Press
Getting back on track to Uluru
Blake Alan Cansdale, ANTAR
“We are shaped by our shaping of the world, and are shaped again in turn.
The way we face the world alters the face that we see in the world.”
From David Whyte on Destiny
(From Making Sense with Sam Harris)
Spectrum | Max Cooper (Official video by Christian Stangl)