Hope
At a recent teaching session, at the end of the day, a Student of Colour, a man who was about 10 years younger than myself, came to see me and asked for 5 minutes of my time. I could see he was nearly in tears, so asked him what the problem was. He told me that in all his life, his schooling, his time doing a number of courses in his previous career, and during his time at university now, he had never been taught by an Academic of Colour. He told me that he was until then unaware of how much it mattered to him that, that he was feeling emotions he didn’t realise he had, just because a fellow Black man had spoken ‘to him’ in a class full of people. Our conversation lasted far longer than 5 minutes. And on the drive home, I was visibly impacted by the experience.
These are dark times for us all.
I, like so many of you who have been reading these blogs for a while, have been sort of silenced into stunned despair by the changing political landscape. And as I watch the multitude of identities of so many major nations disrupt and disassemble attempts to achieve some semblance of equality, or equity, whilst also bolstering their own position of superiority, I ponder how I have been feeling of late.
It can be easy to fall into despair. To sink into the deep well of depression at the state of so many things sitting around us. Wars, not just those chosen by the Global Northern Elite for their protests of choice, rage around us, unseen, hidden, yet no less destructive and maddening because they are non-white. Fears, predominantly those manipulated by these Blofeld’s of social media, ripple, nay are a tsunami of manipulated anxiety and fear, emotions which sweep up so many who so easily and readily desire the safety and comforts their creators so promise.
For myself, as I enter 2025, I find myself making shifts in my social media to both represent and to protect myself. The biggest factor perhaps, is that I have come away from Twitter. After maybe 15 years, recognising how little I saw of those who I related to, was friendly with, and who have helped me to build my career, was difficult to do, but necessary. Necessary not only for my mental health, but also for my moral centre, as I could no longer self-justify sitting in that cesspool of socially created hate any longer. It was sad to leave, I was sad to depart, but to depart meant the giving up of hope that things would change, that community and sense would prevail.
A whispered word, a presentation, a blog post, my books. The number of times these things I write have had an impact I could never have foreseen. From emails received from students across the country who have found something in my work which I didn’t foresee (thank you), to the organisations who wanted me to speak on something I had written in a blog which I had not foreseen (thank you), to the teachers and scholars around the world who wanted to connect me about something I had crafted, the reach of which I had never foreseen (thank you again). I get my role in providing hope. I get my role in speaking my truth and being a beacon of hope. Of being one of many.
Whilst working with some lovely people recently, I found myself reflecting on the world around me. It was whilst I was playing the Hope Speech, a speech given by Harvey Milk at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade in June 1978. Milk was a prominent activist and politician in the LGBTQ community, a brilliant orator, incredibly intelligent man, and someone who sadly lost his life way before his time (Van Sant, 2008).
The words (look them up, especially spoken through the lens of the wonderful Sir Ian McKellen) held a powerful resonance back then in the 1970s, a time riven by the systemic stereotyping and institutional hatred towards the LGBTQ community, an anger which only intensified in the 1980s with the AIDS epidemic. An anger echoed across the Global North.
The words though spoke of hope. That difficult concept, one I am sometimes critical of when it is misused by politicians in order to silence and supplicate a minority who have come to said political system seeking support and change. A change which never comes. In this context though, hope, as spoken of by Milk, is something active. It is something which we create ourselves, something which we build upon out of our willingness to put ourselves forward. It is us doing something to provide hope for others. And this is what Milk speaks of. We have the power, we are the hope, we are that which the other needs to see in order to recognise there is a chance for change, that there is a way forward out of this morass of cultural populism.
Yet, what about me.
Sometimes when I feel despair at the world around me, even I don’t know what to do. Recently though, with the help of my own therapy, I have been encouraged to write to the ancestors. Normally once a month, I will write them a letter. Then I will take that letter down to the seafront where I life, often at the end of the day, and I will sit and ponder things. I will then read the letter to ‘them’, before casting the letter into the sea; a prayer, my prayer, for the assistance of those who have gone before. Do they reply to me? Yes. Always. In my dreams, in my synchronicities, in my more centred moments, I feel and experience their words of wisdom, their whispers of hope.
Because even I need hope.
Hegel (1976) spoke to the idea of culture as being one which meanders like a river, flowing back on itself from time to time, as it crafts and carves its way past obstacles, as it seeks out the solace of the ocean at the end of its pathway. When I look at populism, I see it very much as a cultural corrective, a course redirection out a fear of what it knows is coming. A necessary recognition most probably that the direction we are headed was always the right one, but that the course to get there was flawed in a way.
The despair of so many in the meanwhile, that fear that all the work that has gone into creating the space for change has been for naught. That fear, that tiredness, that resentment and pain. This feeling that we all have. This is when patience and reflexivity become important. This is when self-care becomes so important. This is when community becomes important.
And simultaneously, this is when trust in the truism of hope then becomes important. Not the hope promised by some politician as a means of cultural control. But the hope, the trust in the inner process of hope, which comes from the gut. A kind of hope which compels people like you and people like me, to keep on speaking up, to keep on speaking out, to keep on challenging each other as we grow together, as we craft together, and we come together to build that world we so believe in.
Like Harvey Milk said, in that brilliant, brilliant speech. We are hope, we have to become hope, and we have to give people hope.
We have to be hope.
When I sit and ponder why I do the things I do, I realise that one of the things I am often asked is what if I don’t win? The question has always puzzled me for a number of reasons. Firstly, any victory would only be temporary as the battle is always ongoing. Secondly, given that a the war is never ending, I will be long departed from this world by the time it is realised. So why bother, I asked myself? Because of hope. Because when I talk up, speak out, stand up, I provide a beacon of hope to those who need it. We provide hope for those who need it.
We Are Hope.
References
Hegel, G. (1976). Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford University Press.
Van Sant, G. (2008). Milk (p. 1). Focus Features. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1013753/companycredits?ref_=ttfc_ql_5