I have been thinking a lot about how to defend myself against despair.  During the pandemic, I realized that I needed a sense of self and a philosophy that was not tied to a certain future or stable external systems.  I read books on happiness, neurology and Man’s Search for Meaning.  I rode my bike as long and as fast as I could in a circle on a track in a local park.  I could not define at the time what I was looking for.  Meaning? Purpose? Motivation? Joy?

Eventually I came to understand that I was looking for hope.  The lack of information, the breakdown of supply chains, the instability, all merged to make me feel intense dread.  I needed a way to inoculate against that dread. The antidote, the opposite of dread, is hope.

Slowly, over the course of the last year, I have been examining the source of hope.  Hope is usually defined as a positive emotion.  I do not control my emotions.  I have input on how I respond to them.  I can change my perspective or the story I tell myself, but emotional control is trying to exert force backwards in time.

Neurochemically, emotions are made of food I eat which is turned into precursors of neurotransmitters in my digestive system.  These chemicals are activated by stimuli as it is interpreted by my subconscious.  Only then, after the hormones have been released, does that information get to my prefrontal cortex.  My verbal language processing can then articulate my emotional state to myself and then to others.  You can see that my conscious mind is the last step of a feeling.

However, my conscious mind is the only form of input that I have.  So how can I make a decision to feel something?  Well, I have to eat food with the right precursor nutrients first.  But that still leaves the trigger unknown.

The purpose of the conscious mind, the prefrontal cortex is to make decisions about actions.  So if I want to feel something, especially if I am looking to choose what to feel, I need to know how different actions make me feel.

That made me consider what activities people do when they feel hopeful.  They act happy.  They are not depressed, or they take steps to treat their depression.  They invest in a good future, they imagine good possibilities, give generously and invest in their relationships.  They take risks, both fiscal and emotional.  They act on faith.

I quickly realized that hope was the source of all that is the best of humanity.  Persistence, dedication, generosity, forgiveness, the list goes on.  So I circled back to my question with a renewed enthusiasm.  How do I feel hope?

Over time I came to define an act of hope.  The unifying theme is that these activities only have an effect if the future is good.  Kindness is only beneficial if it is returned, generosity is only helpful if the person is grateful & kind, caretaking is only beneficial if a relationship can be built, even temporarily.  Skills only benefit me if I survive and the world is such that I can use them in the future.  Sowing seeds only benefits me if they take root and grow.  These are not only investments in the future, they are intentions toward a good future.  They point my mind toward a positive result of my actions.

I have shifted my mind to identifying and prioritizing acts of hope.  Awareness was the first step.  Identifying what future I am intending with my actions. By brushing my teeth, I am investing in growing old with healthy teeth.  It has transformed my experience of cleaning the kitchen from a chore into an investment into the health of my family.  By journaling and improving my writing, I am intending and creating the possibility of a future where my writing may be read.

The magic of acts of hope is that they create the possibility of a good future.  While acts of despair do the opposite.  I now have to consciously balance my actions, not my feelings, into making a life where I am consistently investing in hope.  It lets me take control in the place I can, and forgive myself my failures.  Because there is always room for the possibility of improvement.  I need never arrive.  The journey is where hope is found.

I have so far found this to be an effective inoculation against despair.  If I feel bad emotions, I have my journals, my health, my clean teeth, my gratitude, to remind me that I am going somewhere.  Whatever uncertainty the future holds, I am going to be there to see it – for as long as I can.  I am cultivating resilience, persistence, and hope within myself every day.

Life is not an easy journey.  The path is littered with hardship, loss, fear and pain.  It is up to me to figure out how to persist and recover.  It is up to me to create a life with meaning.  That means it is up to me to invest in hope.