It feels a bit more busier, or the atmospherics have changed this campervan morning. The air is full of far off tyres grinding against concrete. It’s chilly and once again overnight dampness surrounds me. Drips of water from Oak and eaves. Cool air on face, cheeks, nose and chest, dampness grabbing slightly at my asthma, the cold quickly sits on your clothes. It’s dark, but an apparently cloudless sky promises quite a sunrise this morning. The birds are busy, crows and starlings, the sound of far off magpies and closer small birds. Light starting to colour the morning view. A truly lovely day yesterday of connection, conversation, fun, food and games both near and far. One of my discoveries this past year has been the writings of Rebecca Solnit. Christmas brought me a couple more from her collection. One of these is her small book ‘Hope in the Dark’. She talks of hope and its role in our lives, our nature, society, culture and history. The erosion of hope by commercialist interests. The fact that hope is really only a beginning a starting point, she writes that :
“ Hope… is not a substitute for action, only a basis for it “
On a micro and a macro level your hopes are all they are, unless you go do something about it. I often work with the negative and threat bias of our brain in counselling. The radical view that can be built when we understand our true nature. It often stops us from doing what we so want to and deserve to do, as echoed by Solnit :
“ Victories skip by unheralded, failures are more readily detected”.
For me the hiatus between Christmas and new year is the time for reflection in the year past, goal setting for the year to come and the hopes for the future. A week where I put a wee bit more effort into understanding the shape of things gone by and shaping the things to come. So Solnit’s book has dropped into my lap at the precise time that I needed it. Understanding my and your hopes come to nothing without action. Lovely days people.
“ It’s the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand.” Rebecca Solnit.
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