Hope is a Thing with Feathers

Image from Unsplash+ in collaboration with Allec Gomes

Is Hope Important?

It is indeed.

Hope helps us manage anxiety and stress, helps us cope with adversity, contributes to well-being and quality of life, and makes us happier. Hope brings peace, and hope signals trust.

Studies show that hope is not a passive wishful exercise, but an active, forward-looking approach to life that moves us closer to where we want to go.

Hope implies possibility.

Hope motivates and keeps us going.

Hope is resilient. It affords us patience and a wider view which can result in unanticipated, creative ways forward.

Hope isn’t related to IQ, education-level, occupation, or income. Hope is about optimism, perspective, framing, and a persistent belief in what’s possible. Hope doesn’t ignore facts, make excuses, and it is not delusional pretending. Hope involves acknowledgement of the truth of a situation and working through tough stuff, while looking toward possibility and best ways to cope and carry on.

Hope is warm and carries us through. Research proves that hope is good for you and for me.

Photo from Unsplash+ via Getty Images

Hope Is Warm & Persistent

Born in 1830 to a prosperous Massachusetts family, Emily Dickinson dazzled and frustrated her teachers with brilliant writing and oratory, and exceptional originality of thought. Dickinson lived most of her life secluded in her home, read voraciously, and penned rhythmic, powerful, often fragmented poems on a variety of subjects including metaphysics, simplicity, beauty, and death. Her work is often cited as being simultaneously enigmatic and accessible. Her 1861 work Hope is a Thing with Feathers is one of Dickinson’s most-widely read pieces:

Hope is the Thing with Feathers (1861)

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops – at all

And sweetest in the Gale is heard

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm

I’ve heard it in the chillest land

And on the strangest Sea

Yet – never – in Extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

Like the bird in Dickinson’s poem, hope is warm, selfless, and persistent. Hope is resilient, affords us patience and a penchant for what’s possible. Hope is sometimes the only thing that helps or is needed. Take care to deprive no one of hope, as it is sometimes all that one has.

As we acknowledge facts, we can subscribe to hope as we craft best ways forward.