Why I turn to hope to give me energy to create a better world

In September 2022 while I was spending some time in Amsterdam, I visited the Moco Museum. On the way out of the museum I collected a few cards that featured some of Banksy’s iconic street art. I intended to use the cards to capture messages of thanks for people who had been generous to me in the year of 2022.

One of the cards, the one of the far left of the picture snap above, contained the word hope and on the back of it I wrote some words similar to the ones that I have typed out below.

The word hope is one that I turn to, to help me navigate the craziness that the world throws our way. The hope I hold in our shared humanity. The courage to imagine a world that is different to the one that we live in today.

“Hope is an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one’s life or the world at large.”

As you look around there are examples of hope that shine through the challenges that often cloud our immediate horizon. No journey worth taking is every easy. Let’s turn to the energy hope provides to help us navigate towards a future we can be proud of.

When I started writing this piece, I had been standing in the airport security line at Schiphol Airport waiting patiently to pass through security check point on my way to Barcelona. As I was in the line for a little over two hours, due to labour strikes, I witnessed the varying reactions and emotions that this friction point unearthed in people. The one that stood out to me though, was the kindness and compassion that people had for other travellers. Many people willingly let travellers pass and move to the front of the line if they were going to miss their flights. A simply act of kindness you might say, but’s it’s presence gave me hope for our shared humanity. Perhaps ask yourself when was the last time you last showed compassion or kindness towards a complete stranger?

I am finishing writing this piece while sitting at desk in small coastal village in South Africa. While these worlds are a fair physical distance apart from one another, the last three years have shown us how interconnected (and interdependent) the world truly is.

The future may be uncertain, but I am optimistic that humanity has the ability to problem solve a way out of some of the biggest challenges we face to create a more equitable, sustainable and diverse world.

“The way you heal a system is to connect more of it to itself” Paul Hawken