Happy New Year everyone!
We say this to one another but what does it actually mean? I suppose at a basic level it’s a hoping that the events the New Year will bring will be propitious ones. So, the typical new year greeting is an expression of hope. It would be nice to believe that the content of our hopes will be realized. Yet, do we really have a lot of confidence in this being so?
Firstly, it’s important to have a clear sense of those things we are hoping for. In our personal and family lives there are certain outcomes that we hope could be realized in the coming year. Our civic life is deeply polarized, and our political processes and institutions fractured and in need of healing. In 2019 what do we hope might be deliverable outcomes for the good of the nation and in particular, for the flourishing of people across all walks of life? I am asking us all to give some conscious thought to answering this question for ourselves, while we are still in the early weeks of the New Year.
Hope and the action of hoping is more than being optimistic. Optimism is born from signs that things are moving in a better direction. Hope and hoping is what we cling to when there seems no obvious signs for such encouragement. I want to list several characteristics of hope and the process of hoping
continue reading
