Often we hear hope referred to as the light at the end of the tunnel, this tunnel can represent any number of things, from a daily struggle, to a life or death situation. Hope is what helps many overcome the adversity they are facing. We can read, watch or listen to many different stories of hope, but what connects all of them? What aspects of these stories makes us consider them stories of hope?
There are three things that I think are very closely intertwined with the idea of hope.
Resilience
Adversity
Survival
Here are notes I’ve taken on stories relating to these ideas.
When we look at stories of hope, we can always find at a minimum, one of these other ideas.
We can look at Bethany’s story. She survived a shark attack and lost her arm. For a while she was unable to surf and when she got back to it, her skill level was considerably lower. She persevered through this and showed resilience. She later went on to become a professional level surfer, and shares her inspirational healing story with others. Her story not only shares the hope of recovering from a life threatening injury, but allows us to read about her resilience, her journey of survival, and her strength in overcoming adversity.
All of which are inspiring, and can give many a feeling of hope.
There is a difference between hope and optimistic hope. Some people will confuse the idea that resilience comes from an optimistic nature, however this is most often untrue. A holocaust survivor shares a demonstration of this when asked about those who didn’t make it out of the concentration camps. He says, “Oh, that’s easy. It was the optimists. They were the ones who said we were going to be out by Christmas. And then they said we’d be out by Easter and then out by Fourth of July and out by Thanksgiving, and then it was Christmas again.” Someone who is truly resilient looks at their realty with a clear eye, rather than denying what is happening around them. When you fully accept your reality, you are able to be resilient as to what’s to come. Often when you look your reality head on, you can find true meaning for yourself. This meaning in your life can be that one bit of hope that is going to allow you to be resilient through the adversity you are facing.
Something I’ve been looking into more is the idea that our memories are our history, and history can only live through memory. It is then through that memory that we can gain hope at what has already been faced by ourself or others. Keeping memories alive from people who have faced adversity allows us to learn and gain hope from them, but also allows future generations to do the same. We can look broadly at First Nations in Canada over the years, many of whom were sent as children to grow up in residential schools where they were assimilated into Canadian culture. Those who survived brought their traumatizing stories with them and passed them on keeping the memory alive. Today and over the past few years we see more and more aboriginal people speaking out publicly, and sharing their traumatic stories. Now more people are aware of what transpired and are able to keep those memories alive with them, they are able to fully understand our history. Sharing these memories has even led to change in the system, and to the 94 calls of action put out by the government in an attempt at reconciliation for what happened. Without having preserved the memories of what happened and sharing out their history, this type of change would have been much harder to make happen. We can look just at the horrifying stories survivors have shared, or we can shift our perspective and look at the resilience and bravery it took for them just to relive that memory in order to share it and share the truth of what happened. When we shift our perspective like that, we can see the hope that rises through the darkness of everything that happened to them.
The stories I’ve referenced are all stories of hope. We can read about these peoples journey and the struggles they went through, and feel hope because they did make it. They were just any other human till they were faced with adversity, and showed the level of resilience they did in order to survive.
Their story shows us that we to can be resilient through times of adversity. We remember and preserve their stories to pass on the lesson they can teach us and the hope we can gain from them.
A story of hope is made up of these three ideas,
Resilience
Adversity
Survival
We can read, watch or listen to someone’s story of hope. Where they faced an adversity, and showed resilience in order to survive.