Hope in the Middle

The news today:

Sports betting is up. Religious worship is down.

Phone-gazing is up. Book-reading is down.

Loneliness is up. Confidence in our institutions is way down.

Where is hope in all this?

Hope is living in ambiguity, that netherworld between catastrophizing (the sky is falling) and normalizing (there's nothing to see here). Hope requires us to hold the course, not swing on a pendulum. Hope is the foundation for a better future, not a prop for how we want to feel today.

Hope requires us to get out of our own wobbly way.

What's getting in the way of your hope in our current environment?

• Self-satisfaction in being on the "right" side?
• Laziness in regressing to dualistic ways of thinking?
• Perversity in rooting for the comeuppance of people you detest?
• Impatience with human progress?
• Despair in looking at the odds against whatever outcomes you want?

Or something else? Hope demands balance on life's see-saws and hammocks. It appears when you are steady, not when things stabilize.

Do you want to be more hopeful? Work on finding your own personal equilibrium. Strive for fairness, harmony and the Golden Mean. Scrutinize your excesses. Moderate your expectations. Mediate extremes wherever you find them.

Hope to be in the middle.