The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. KEEP HOPE ALIVE! “Hope is the sun. It is light. It is passion. It is the fundamental force for life’s blossoming.”

The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful.

PAUL HAWKEN “Hope is the sun. It is light. It is passion. It is the fundamental force for life’s blossoming.” – Daisaku Ikeda ONLY HOPE MAKES SENSE Hope doesn’t spoil one’s enjoyment of the present. Rather, it makes a certain kind of pleasure possible, despite the circumstances. Perhaps there is a defiance to it in that regard, a determination to enjoy life despite the grimness of oppression. I think here of Maya Angelou’s iconic poem “And Still I Rise,” with its gleeful repudiation of a downtrodden stance: Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops Weakened by my soulful cries’ There is a glorious militancy to this living out of the pleasures of hope: ‘Does my sexiness offend you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I’ve got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs The poem’s delight in being boldly hopeful refuses the expected submissiveness. Instead, it celebrates audacious hope. So hope’s power lies in its embrace of the present as a time of possibilities. As a practice of enjoyment undertaken despite hard times, hope resists fear and despair. And so if we want lives that are both enjoyable and open to change, we should choose hope even in dark times—because it keeps the possibility of a better world alive for us. Sandy Grant is a philosopher at the University of Cambridge. She recently delivered the Royal Institute of Philosophy annual lecture “Dark Times” and is the first philosopher to perform at Latitude Festival. Sandy tweets at @TheSandyGrant.