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The Case for Hope

May 16, 2024

Every year at year’s end, Nicholas Kristof, Opinion Columnist for the New York Times writes a column about the state of the world. Each year, he acknowledges the horrendous and horrible developments of the past 12 months, and the massive challenges they bring. And at the same time, he also acknowledges the developments that have been tremendous and transformative in helping to make life on earth better than it’s ever been before throughout history.

It has only been five months since he wrote his last column lamenting 2023’s challenges and celebrating the developments, not 12. But recently, he wrote another one, seven months ahead of his usual annual declaration. 

Have the past five months been so utterly bad that he needed to boost our morale so soon? Some, perhaps most, would declare that, yes, it's been that bad. With two brutal and devastating wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as others less in the news around the world, with economic anxiety so strong and real for so many, and with poverty and starvation so acute in too many places, plus the myriad of problems such as the growing loneliness epidemic, growing cancer rates among young people, and the ever-present, ever-bitter global political divides and animosity, 2024 has not been so good. The news is terrible. Many, many people are dispirited and despairing, feeling as if there is a toxicity among, around, and within us that steals our hope away. 

So, NIcholas Kristof must have thought another one of those columns was needed right now. If he did, we’re grateful that he did. His newest one is a balm for our own anxious and weary souls.

The Case for Hope is his newest piece of encouragement and reassurance that great advancements are happening, despite all the bad that is happening, too. We are so grateful for the reminder. 

He writes:

What I’ve learned from four decades of covering misery is hope — both the reasons for hope and the need for hope. I emerge from years on the front lines awed by material and moral progress, for we have the good fortune to be part of what is probably the greatest improvement in life expectancy, nutrition and health that has ever unfolded in one lifetime.

He goes on to acknowledge that:

My message of hope rubs some Americans the wrong way ... 

Yet:

… The danger is that together all of us in society collectively reinforce a melancholy that leaves us worse off. Despair doesn’t solve problems; it creates them. It is numbing and counterproductive, making it more difficult to rouse ourselves to tackle the challenges around us.

Someone To Tell It To is about helping people to have hope. Hope that is an antidote to despair. Hope that we are not all alone when we are in the midst of profound challenges. Hope that propels us to work for the very change that can come when we can envision a way forward. 

We believe that there is always a way forward. Somehow. Some way.

As examples, Kristof’s commentary reminds us of some significant facts from the last decades:

  • There has been an enormous reduction in global poverty.
  • Close to 1,000,000 fewer children will die this year than in 2016.
  • The number of children in brothels around the world continues to drop.
  • Globally, 25,000,000 lives have been saved from AIDS.

He believes that if we work to achieve better outcomes, we can and will succeed. It means replacing despair with guarded hope, such as these statistics show.

This isn’t hope as a naïve faith that things will somehow end up OK. No, it is a somewhat battered hope that improvements are possible if we push hard enough.

Kristof closes his commentary with the story of 2004 of an illiterate woman named Mukhtar Mai, whom he met in Pakistan. She had been gang-raped and was then expected to disappear in shame or kill herself. Instead, she prosecuted her attackers, sent them to prison and then used her compensation money to start a school in her village.

Mukhtar did not give in to despair. She taught Kristof that humans are “endowed with strength — and hope — that, if we recognize it and flex it, can achieve the impossible.”

To achieve the impossible.

We see it through our work listening to others’ stories of brokenness, grief, pain, disease, and loneliness, when they have felt as if their lives getting better was impossible:

  • In those who wished to die because loneliness and loss drove them to despair. But in being shown respect, validation, and love found new life and a will to live again. 
  • In those struggling with life-threatening diseases, who could live out their remaining days in peace, knowing that they were cared about and that they mattered to others.
  • In those who were adrift and deeply uncertain about their relationships and place in this world, who, when valued and affirmed, began to believe in themselves and in the gift that they are to the world.

Hope is one this world’s strongest defenses, motivators, and inspirations for making this world and this life we all share better. Hope is love in action, a declaration that life is worth living, and that the world is a place worth saving and making better. We believe that the listening work we do is both a gift of love and a gift of hope to those searching for light in the darkness, support through the pain, and redemption in the disappointments, regrets, and loneliness that too often touch human lives. 

Every ally along the way, who reminds us of the signs of hope in the midst of despair, gives us the gift of persevering to show the world that it can be better. That it is growing better every day.

Photo by Ronak Valobobhai on Unsplash 

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