A break for a healing dose of optimism and hope
Now that we've passed Imbolc and the lunar new year, let's take a break from dread
The Year of the Dragon is said to be challenging, but auspicious. And we live in good times, really. (Woodcut Wood Dragon by Steve Rein.)
(Adapted from a 2023 column to accommodate a vacation. The Upstate American will not publish next week.)
It is not your imagination if things seem just a bit lighter these days. We are, after all, in the first days after the Imbolc — that is, the date that is the threshold between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. This year, it was Feb. 1.
In the Gaelic tradition, Imbolc is a time for celebration, and last year it became a national holiday in Ireland. In America, Imbolc gets lost somewhere in the marketing surrounding Valentine’s Day and Presidents’ Day weekend. Yet the Imbolc matters in nature, because it’s when there’s finally enough light to help plants grow. Though I grew up in areas where the agriculture sector was strong, I hadn’t heard of the Imbolc until I moved Upstate. Our friends who farm up the road say they always welcome it. “It’s a long way to go until spring, weather- and greenery-wise,” farmer Annie noted last year, “but the balance is tipping toward growth.”
Makes you feel hopeful, right?
There’s more good news. The lunar new year arrived just 10 days after the Imbolc this year, meaning that we have just started the Year of the Dragon. The dragon is the most powerful symbol in the 12-year cycle observed by Asian societies, and while it is said to portend a year of challenges, the dragon is supposed to ultimately bring auspicious opportunities and exciting advancements. It’s especially good for those born in another dragon year. (Like me!)
That kind of an optimistic outlook is mighty welcome, because Americans these days are more grouchy than usual. The Marist Poll noted a few weeks ago that the national outlook for 2024 is more pessimistic than any other time in the last six years. Maybe that’s not surprising — there’s enough bad news daily to depress the most eager Pollyanna — but it’s unsettling in light of American history.
Optimism has been claimed as a defining characteristic of Americans since the first Europeans landed on the Eastern seaboard in the 17th century. You can understand why that reputation developed: It takes confidence to set out to forge a community in a foreign wilderness, launch a war for independence against the world’s greatest military power and build out a nation across a vast continent.
Alexis de Tocqueville, the Frenchman whose trenchant observations of Americans early in the 19th century have long been embraced across eras, noted that citizens on this side of the Atlantic displayed “a lively faith in the perfectibility of man ... They all consider society as a body in a state of improvement.” At the beginning of the 21st century, the Irish philosopher Charles Handy retraced de Tocqueville’s steps, and reported finding the same spirit. “Anyone visiting America from Europe cannot fail to be struck by the energy, enthusiasm, and confidence in their country’s future that he or she will meet among ordinary Americans – a pleasing contrast to the world-weary cynicism of much of Europe,” Handy wrote in 2001. “Most Americans seem to believe that the future can be better and that they are responsible for doing their best to make it that way.”
But consider what happened next, and what has followed. We experienced the national trauma of 9/11, followed by ugly and unresolved wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, then the Great Recession, years of relentless gun violence, life-threatening climate change, then, a pandemic with economic shocks that affected the whole world. And, perhaps most powerfully building a sense of doom, we now confront political decay fomented by a right-wing takeover of one of our major parties, with a truly dangerous demagogue at its head. It has been a tough couple of decades.
Now we are told over and over again by ambitious politicians that things are bleak in America. Even if we recognize the self-serving origin of that rhetoric, we hear it so much that it sinks in, and notably erodes any sense that our collective efforts through government can make a difference. Nor are we comfortable in turning to spirituality for support anymore: Most Americans now tell pollsters that they’re not members of any place of worship.
No wonder we’re less likely to display that old-fashioned confidence in the future. It’s not at all what we expected at the dawn of the Age of Aquarius.
And yet, in some important ways, this is the best time in human history to be alive – a fact that you might think would inspire more confidence. That’s the view often advanced by Bill Gates, and while it’s easy for a billionaire to feel good, his point is based in fact: The rapid advance of scientific knowledge is creating a more comfortable and equitable world, with more life-saving breakthroughs on the near horizon. If the perils that we face seem more threatening, the capacity we have to confront them is also greater.
There’s both societal and individual peril in pessimism. Plenty of research suggests that an optimistic outlook makes people healthier and more productive. Researchers say optimism matters because it motivates us. People who are optimistic have reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, reduced likelihood of cognitive impairment, lower levels of pain and even better romantic lives. Optimistic people tend to work harder, which makes them more productive and more financially secure.
It’s not hard to infer, then, that a society filled with people who are optimistic is likely to be healthier, richer and happier. If we aspire to that still, as surely we do, then we need to grow our hope again. We need to be, in fact, those indomitable citizens observed by de Tocqueville and mythologized by generations of historians and politicians.
That doesn’t happen easily, nor necessarily naturally. Experience tells us that hope can rise when we have personal and collective victories — like, say, a candidate we support winning an election or a project we’ve done at work reaching a favorable conclusion.
Most often, though, hope derives not from such discrete events, but rather in the way that an addict reaches sobriety: one day at a time. A day of hope is created by putting together several hours of it, and days lead to weeks and months.
Some research suggests that perhaps one-fourth of the optimism people feel is actually inherited, meaning that some folks are innately more hopeful than others. But for the most part, we develop hope by consciously embracing and practicing it, until it become a habitual response. We’re almost always more resilient than we imagine.
Hope is, in the end, a tool. We need to have it to use it, and we can then use it to power ourselves forward, as individuals and a society. That is, if we are to have any chance of overcoming the forces that would drag us down — like cynical politicians, selfish fraudsters and sharpies and the inescapable tough events of life that confront us from time to time, ranging from health challenges to the loss of loved ones.
For now, we might take some measure of hope from this moment of Imbolc: the world is turning brighter, and the cycle of life is renewing even in our more frigid neighborhoods. It is, after all, a step toward the inevitable coming of spring. One day at a time, hope returns.
Happy Year of the Dragon: May it bring you inspiration and strength.
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-REX SMITH