Hope, our only way out of 2020 and into 2021. Hope, not in its simplest form but hope as a vision for the future. Hope that transcends the here and now and gives us strength to endure what lies ahead.

We have a new president, the pandemic is not over, people are struggling economically, emotionally and mentally, and over 1.4 million worldwide have died of COVID-19. It will take a different kind of hope to heal our nation’s divide, to inspire each individual to do their part to stop the spread of COVID-19, to help soothe the pain of all that was lost in the aftermath of 2020.

Vaclav Havel, a Czech writer who was imprisoned by his country’s communist rulers, became a symbol of freedom and his nation’s first president in the post-communist era. In a series of interviews with a Czech journalist that resulted in a book called Disturbing the Peace, Havel shared his definition of hope. It is a gift, one that has profoundly touched me as I reflect upon 2020. I would like to share this gift with you as we soon enter a new year.

From Disturbing the Peace:

… “[T]he kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us, or we don’t… Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons... 

“…Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpromising the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. In short, I think that the deepest and most important form of hope, the only one that can keep us above water and urge us to good works, and the only true source of the breathtaking dimension of the human spirit and its efforts, is something we get, as it were, from ‘elsewhere.’ It is also this hope, above all, that gives us the strength to live and continually to try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now.” - Vaclav Havel

Happy Holidays to you and yours from the Tribuna Family!