Where Do You Find Hope When Things Seem Hopeless?
Suggested places to look for hope when it's hard to find
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a compass that showed us where to go to find hope? Or at least pointed us in the right direction?
Hope can be difficult to find, and it’s often hardest to find when we need it the most. Here are three places I look for and almost always find hope:
Good news stories
I try to avoid the usual news about murders, war crimes, and other atrocities. Instead, I search for inspirational stories about people who are making a positive difference in their communities. Those stories give me hope, and remind me that most people are kind and generous. Here are two examples:
The Unusual Wish of a 13-year-old
I have a personal connection to this one; my sister was one of the doctors who treated this remarkable teenager.
What You Should Know About Dolly Parton
I’m not a country music fan, but I admire Dolly Parton for her other work many people are unaware of.
And here’s one place I consistently find good news stories:
This website is full of hopeful and heartwarming stories. Readers can also opt to get the stories via email. I subscribe to the newsletter and highly recommend it!
Children
Of course children aren’t always happy or kind. But when I’m at the park, pool, or beach I usually see children laughing and having fun. They do things like lie in the grass and roll down the hill, chase each other (and birds and squirrels), and build sandcastles. Most don’t hesitate to introduce themselves to and play with kids they don’t know. They don’t care if those kids have different skin colors, genders, or primary languages. They just see fellow humans they want to spend time with. That gives me hope.
So does their generosity. Sometimes kids refuse to share toys or snacks, especially with their siblings. But at other times children are more than happy to share or give away items. When my husband and I went out to dinner a few months ago, an adorable little girl seated next to us opened her palm to reveal a crushed flower petal she handed to me. She was so excited to give me that gift, and I was delighted to receive it!
As the late Whitney Houston sang so beautifully,
I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be
(“The Greatest Love of All,” lyrics by Linda Creed)
Memoirs
Because I write about mental health, I read a lot of memoirs. Most are by authors who experienced significant traumas with devastating lifelong consequences. Those books include vivid descriptions of horrible events that make me weep.
But those memoirs are also places to find hope. They are stories of incredible courage and strength. They are proof that it is possible to survive and recover from even the worst traumatic experiences.
Perhaps the best example of that is Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl was a Nazi concentration camp prisoner and the book shares what he endured there and what he thinks enabled him to survive. The book’s description includes a statement from Anderson Cooper, who says he rereads the book often and it gives him hope. The description also contains these words: “Today, as new generations face new challenges and an ever more complex and uncertain world, Frankl's classic work continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living, in spite of all obstacles.”
There are many other emotionally intense and powerful memoirs that give me hope. I’ve written about (and quoted) Glennon Doyle’s memoirs before, my favorite of which is Untamed. Other memoirs I highly recommend are listed here.
As author Gerald G. May wrote, “Hope can sometimes be an elusive thing, and occasionally it must come to us with pain. But it is there, irrevocably.”
May we all find hope when we search for it. It may be hidden or buried, but it is still there.
“Hope is the thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it.” — Barack Obama
P.S. In case you missed it, last week I invited subscribers to join a community of people crazy enough to believe a better world is possible and want to help create it:
The World Needs More Crazy People Like These!
I usually avoid using words like “crazy” that can have negative connotations. But there’s a good kind of crazy I want to be and think you might, too. A sermon by Episcopal Presiding Bishop Michael Curry shared on episcopalchurch.org (and quoted by my pastor) reminded me that being crazy can be a positive quality. Crazy people challenge widely-held beliefs. They do things other people consider impossible. They change the world.
There is a series called "Down to Earth" with Zac Efron on Netflix. Zac and his Friend Darin went to Puerto Rico after the hurricanes there in 2019, (or 2020) and interviewed many people who shared their resources of solar energy to keep people's insulin and other drugs for them during the power outages created by the storms., and a chef who opened a kitchen with meals for people on the whole island after the storms.They went to France, Sardinia ,Italy, Australia, Iceland and several other countries, where people have made positive environmental changes for the health of people living there.
Also, I recently has tendonitis in my right arm and haven't been able to type much until getting good physical therapy this past two months, also couldn't lift anything with my right arm for a while. I am thankful for the hope and praise that my good physical therapist gave me. Of course I did the exercises he prescribed to me which helped me greatly. So I was quite encouraged by the hope I got from gradual strenthening of the exercises.