François Matarasso

The sun is shining on frosty grass, stillness everywhere this morning. It’s the start of a new year – for human beings, at least – and I’m grateful for this beauty. January is for new beginnings and never have I felt more in need of one. My internal and external worlds have been close to collapse for much too long. A turn of the calendar cannot change that but it offers a moment to rethink how I might respond to the dangers and uncertainties on all sides.

Over centuries, philosophers have interpreted hope in contradictory ways, as you can hear in this episode of BBC Radio’s In Our Time. Is hope an illusion that encourages passivity and submission or a resource with which to face adversity and build solutions? I wrote about Rebecca Solnit’s distinction between hope and optimism in the final chapter of A Restless Art. Optimists, she says, like pessimists, believe they know what will happen. Hope, by contrast, accepts uncertainty and with it the possibility of working to influence what comes next. 

Hope is not a feeling. It is a choice acted upon, built day by day in what we do and how we do it. That doesn’t make it self-fulfilling but, wise choices and actions increase the probability of outcomes we want. Hope is empowering when we see it as reason and energy to work towards a better future. War, climate change and political injustice are not swept away by hope but it can strengthen anyone working for better alternatives. It is because 2025 dawns on a world facing an intimidating raft of crises and threats that hope is a vital choice.