Why I Choose Hope

What a week. After months of lockdowns extreme challenges for so many people around the world and just at the dawn of our first hesitating steps towards a most uncertain journey back to normalcy we are, yet again, reminded of the brutal racial injustices that we knew haven't been eliminated but hoped were soon crimes of the past. 

I wrote in my first newsletter about "emotional contradictions" and how the COVID experience had been pulling me towards both ends of my emotional spectrum. I am oscillating hourly and daily between exhaustion and exhilaration. And this week, I felt the distance between pessimism and optimism was expanded further. So let me give you a brief case for both and why I land on hope! 

Why Pessimism?

On the one hand, I have never felt more concerned, worried, and fearful about the future. There are enormous challenges ahead. Many (if not all) have been known by most of us for a long time. But the pandemic has been like a giant curtain pulled and is revealing the uncomfortable human conditions we earlier experienced but only at a distance. But now they have moved closer to home. These concerns are being magnified against a backdrop of a divisive, seemingly sclerotic, totally polarized and ineffective political system. All of it further amplified by a surround sound of narrowcast, binary and loud social media landscape thirsty for sensational, immediate, and shareable snippets of incomplete truths that widen the divide and make solutions seem further away. In this arena of my feelings, the antidotes and escapes are most often found in a large glass of single malt, a good movie or the warm comforting embrace of my loved ones. 

Why Optimism?

Fortunately, and simultaneously, there is another feeling on the opposite spectrum of emotions that is growing stronger and stronger. COVID didn't bring me there alone. But the recent horrific reminders of the injustices committed against innocent people as well as the even more beautiful manifestations of millions of people committed to a different future has deepened my own resolve, intensified my commitment and made me, in a surprising turn of emotions, feel more optimistic about our future than in a long time. I know that might sound strange but here is the thinking behind those feelings recognizing humbly that it is difficult, if not impossible, to rationalize your emotional landscapes. But here is my best effort.

For a very long time, I have been a concerned optimist. Optimist, because there simply are more good things going on than bad. The world is, despite all the bad news, better for more people today than ever before in the history of humanity. That's an undeniable fact. Concerned, because despite all the progress, as we have recently been painfully reminded, there are sins from our past that have not been repaired that keeps causing harm and suffering to innocent people. In addition, some of our progress has also caused new significant challenges particularly as it relates to planetary boundaries and inequitable distribution of all progress made. 

I know that our culture today, at least in media, isn't very good in representing both sides of an argument. We are living in the midst of extreme binary bias. There are many reasons for this. "Instalife" and our insatiable appetite for immediate rewards and attention is probably a key driver. More on that in future newsletters. But, remember, it is not only possible but entirely human to hold two opposing ideas in your soul at the same time. Rejecting one just to accept another is not to be human. It's actually denying your own humanity. 

Why I Chose Hope

Pessimism and optimism are passive statements to me. They are just instant declarations of how you feel about the odds of a certain outcome. It's speculative. It doesn't require any active participation on your part. I certainly don't like pessimism. The Swedish futurist Bi Puranen said many years ago that "pessimists only win when someone loses." We can't build from a negative posture. Between the two I obviously prefer optimism. Who doesn't? But there is a fine and quite dangerous line between being an optimist and being ignorant. We need humility. Tons of it. We must be more comfortable swimming in uncertainties. And that is scary for all humans. The Poet Keats talked about "Negative Capability" which he defined as "when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts". This time has certainly sent us to the Keats Gym to work on that particular muscle!

Hope is a more active posture. Hope is a choice. Optimism and Pessimism are beliefs that something will turn out bad or good. Hope is a belief that something CAN turn out good. If we work collaboratively, effectively, and hard towards a desired outcome things can be better. But, there is no guarantee that it will. Hope simply suggests it can happen. With our active participation. 

This of course leads us to the "man in the arena" argument. Which to me is the most honest, truthful and best depiction of how I try to approach life. By leaning into the challenge. By accepting the problem and embracing our responsibility to find a solution (as opposed to pointing to someone else's).

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

   - Theodore Roosevelt, at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, April 23 1910

What I learned this week

So with that as intro. Let me specifically talk about what I learned this week.

I learned that I must listen. Be quiet. Watch. Contemplate. Empathize. 

Or said differently. 

• I need to listen more than I speak.

• I need to do what I can to be part of the solution. And be farther away from the problem. 

• I need to read and learn more about the history and the pervasive, dehumanizing, and structural problems people of color, in particular, are facing in America. 
   

Below I am sharing three "buckets" of links to talks, articles, videos, and organizations that have inspired me, provoked my thinking, elevated my understanding, or simply gave me a reason to believe in a particular solution. 

The first bucket (HONEST) is some talks that woke me up some years ago. I didn't grow up in America so some of the history here wasn't as well known to me. Particularly Bryan Stevenson's and Ta-Nehisi Coates works are worth calling out. Please also watch Trevor Noah's video first. 

The second bucket (HOPEFUL) I turn to articles and discussions that made me hopeful OR that perhaps gave a "different" perspective on our current experience. To me, hope needs to make sense and be based on a broader understanding of it to be believable. Therefore looking at issues from more than one perspective is a necessary ingredient of hope. Please ignore who or what media outlet says what. Focus rather on the differing perspectives brought. Lastly, remember you don’t have to agree with everything or even anything to learn something that can help shape your own thinking. 

The third bucket (HELPFUL) are just a few organizations I love and that I have supported in the past and will continue to support now. There are many. But showing our support these days is a meaningful way to be part of a solution. We all can give something. And if not money we can give voice. 

So. There you are. Another week. Let's hope that next week will bring us more reasons to keep walking towards that other side of our emotional spectrum where all people want to live. As far away from despair as we can. Only together can we get there.

With humility, love, and respect.

Mats


Honest (and much-needed truths to be told)

• Trevor Noah on broken social contracts, contexts and dominos

• Bryan Stevenson's TED talk from 2012 (which shook me up)

• Inside the Kandi Dish

• Ta-Nehisi Coates A case for reparation Atlantic article from 2014 

• Who is most likely to die from Coronavirus (NYT on health outcomes relative to race and income)

• The 1619 Project by New York Times (read up on our history and what got us here)

• Mike Mullen (former Joint Chiefs of Staff) on the need for leadership. Not stunts

• A revolution playlist 

Hopeful (or in some cases offering a different perspective)

• A recent interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ezra Klein

• Almost anything from Krista Tippett and the On Being Project

• David Brooks on how to do reparations right

• Baratunde TED talk from 2019

• Keisha Lance Bottoms (Atlanta Mayor)

• Killer Mike in Atlanta (moved me to tears)

• Robert Glazer on lessons from soccer hooligans 

• The case against Riots here and perhaps here

• WSJ piece on lessons from russian revolution and warning about "ideological segregation"

• Stacey Abrams on why voting feels inadequate (but is the only solution!)

Helpful (some organizations I support)

• Equal Justice Initiative (Bryan Stevenson)

• The Bail Project 

• Color of change 

• Non-Violence Project