Thursday Thoughts...

"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out.”

 Czech dissident, writer and statesman Václav Havel 

I have been thinking about hope a lot - what it is, why we rely upon it, why we even bother with it given the state of the world and all. What does it mean to be hopeful? What does having hope for the future look like? Is it deluded to hold onto hope?

I am coming more and more to the view that hope is terribly important.  Hope is in many ways linked to action I think, and to uncertainty. It is a kind fo catalyst for movement.

Perhaps that is why folk find it easy to dismiss it or be cynical about it - perhaps we shy away from uncertainty and from doing things. Or we ant to ignore any sense of responsibility to try and influence things.

I love this framing of hope by Havel. It opens us up to not knowing how things will work, whilst at the same time knowing that some things simply need to be done. That no matter what, in the doing and taking of action we are stepping into the future doing things that matter.

As I finesse my understanding and thoughts about hope - I am comforted by thinking that it's not all hopeless; that some things are worth doing no matter how they work out.