Letting go of Fantasy and leaning into Grounded Hope
When eyesight fails and when elections are lost, what do we do with our deflated dreams?
Listen to me read the post…
My friend Saleha was telling me about something big in her life that’s still on the horizon. “At first,” she said, “I had a fantasy about it, and I only wanted to believe good things about what it would be like. I didn’t want to let reality in to spoil the fantasy, so I was in denial about what might be challenging about it. But then, a few months ago, I started letting reality in, and now... it’s almost like realism has transformed the fantasy into genuine hope. I still look forward to it, but my hope feels more solid and less fragile.”
“I get it!” I said. “It’s like the fantasy was an immature version of the dream, and it needed to grow up and become something with more meat on the bones – something more sustainable, grounded and possible.”
I’ve been thinking about that conversation a lot in the weeks since – how we shape fantasies that are rooted at least partially in delusion, denial, and pie-in-the-sky optimism, but how those fantasies aren’t real enough to move us forward. They’re like mental candy, providing a sugar rush for the moment and allowing temporary escape from drudgery, grief, and disappointment, but they don’t offer much sustenance and are not sufficiently rooted in the real world.
What we need instead of the fantasy is what I’ve come to call grounded hope. When hope is grounded, it takes all factors into consideration, it’s not afraid of hard work, and it’s not easily shattered by naysayers and pessimists.
Unlike fantasy, grounded hope is mature, realistic, committed, and emotionally evolved. It’s what gets us through the darkest of days. It survives discouragements and times of despair. It’s like the baseline of a musical score, or the string that keeps a kite from floating away or crashing into a tree – it allows for flights of fancy while still holding solidly to the ground.
I thought about grounded hope yesterday on the bus ride back from an ophthalmologist appointment. After a half dozen instruments had been used to peer into my eye (which went through multiple surgeries in Fall), I’d heard the words “there’s nothing more that we can do,” and so the bus ride started with sadness and renewed disappointment. Mostly I knew that little could be done and that I’ll likely spend the rest of my life with a visual impairment that can’t be addressed with glasses, but I’ve been dealing with three different doctors (ophthalmologist, optometrist and retinal specialist) and they keep referring me back and forth to each other, always offering a glimmer of hope that there’s something the other specialist might be able to do. This was the last referral, so reality had finally popped the tiny balloon of possibility I’d been stubbornly clinging to.
As the bus ride progressed, though, the sadness gradually dissipated. Songs from my “Nothing Stays the Same” playlist were playing in my ears, reminding me that I can get through tough times. Outside the bus window I started noticing things that gave me little doses of delight – things I’d never seen on that road because I’m rarely a passenger. There are buckets attached to trees to gather the seasonal sap run. There’s a treehouse that’s been in the tree so long that it re-shaped the tree. There was mist hanging over the lake, and I got to see the lake from a different angle since the bus took a route I’ve had no reason to take before.
As I re-grounded myself in the things that almost always get me through discouragement and despair – music, nature, wonder, and gratitude – I found something beneath the popped balloon of my fantasy. It was grounded hope. Realistic, mature, resilient, sturdy hope. Hope that’s rooted in what’s true of my life and true of who I am and what I can handle.
I know that I can live well with this visual impairment. I’ve already discovered ways of adapting that allow me to continue almost all the activities I love to do, and I’ve grieved the little losses that came, so I don’t really need the fantasy version of the future. I can release that deflated balloon without becoming deflated in the process.
Fantasies come and go, but grounded hope remains steady and reliable.
We nurture our grounded hope over years and years of our lives. Every time we survive a significant loss, or our community rallies to help us get through a challenging time, we feed our grounded hope. Every time we look out the bus window and are re-enchanted by the mist over the lake, despite the fact that our eyes don’t focus as well as they once did, we feed our grounded hope.
For me, grounded hope feels like it is very literally grounded – as in “in the ground”. It’s the soil that helps us grow strong roots and it’s made up of the compost of our unfulfilled dreams and completed stories. It’s threaded through with mycelium that connects us to each other and passes nourishment between us. When I need to access grounded hope and can’t find it in myself, I go to the forest to reconnect with the earth. The more time I spend there, near the ground, the more resourced I feel. (It’s one of the reasons why I take pictures of tiny mushrooms.)
Father Gregory Boyle, who has dedicated his life to the rehabilitation of gang members, uses slightly different language, but says much the same thing. “There's a difference between optimism and hope. I think optimism is concerned about how things turn out and hope is not about how things turn out. Hope is about being faithful to loving and that's what you do... Love never fails, never. So you want to be able to stay anchored in joyful hope.” Optimism is superficial, he goes on to say in an interview, while hope is more sophisticated.
Just a few months ago, many were optimistic that the U.S. would soon be led by a Black/Asian woman who might make the country a safer and more just place, especially for those living on the margins, but that turned out to be a fantasy balloon that got popped by reality just like my fantasy of better vision. Now here we are, just days away from the inauguration of a convicted felon, and far too many news stories are telling us about how those with power and money are already adjusting their plans to line up with the upcoming administration, like social media removing important safeguards and banks withdrawing from their commitment to climate initiatives.
And yet, even while we seem to be turning in the wrong direction, at a moment when it might soon be too late to course correct for our planet, poets like Faraj Bayrakdar, who survived 14 years in brutal prisons in Syria, remind us of the value of grounded hope. He spent many years as an activist, fighting the injustice in his country, and during those years, much of his poetry was about death. When he learned about the fall of the Syrian regime, though, he said it’s time to write about life. "By God, my language is not enough,” he said, in celebrating the fall of the regime. “I felt as though on my shoulders, there was something growing. Something growing quickly that becomes like feathers and like wings. Something akin to flying … I didn't know how to move, my hands were moving out of my control, I didn't know whether to clap or to believe that these were wings with which I can fly?” (The interview with him is one of the most impactful things I’ve encountered in a long time.)
It’s true that some of the bad things we fear might come to pass in coming years, but it’s also true that we are resilient and there are a lot of people who are more determined than ever to gather together to serve the cause of justice and love – people like Father Gregory Boyle and Faraj Bayrakdar who will continue to stand on the side of those on the margins. And it’s also true that nothing stays the same, and there are ways in which the light will always return.
These liminal times, when the unknowability of the future makes us feel anxious and unstable, are precisely the times when we most need people who will remind us of our individual and collective capacity for grounded hope. We need leaders who have nurtured their own grounded hope enough that they have some to share with those for whom it is more elusive. We need people who are rooted in the soil and connected through the mycelium. We need poets and artists and community gatherers and farmers and wilderness guides - anyone who can help us look toward the light that tomorrow might bring.
If you think you might be one of those people – if you’ve lived through enough of life’s hardships to have nurtured at least a small reserve of grounded hope – we hope that you’ll join us for Leadership for Liminal Spaces. In a series of webinars and study groups, we’ll talk about what it means to be a Grounded Guide in times of challenge. While we’re together, we’ll pass the grounded hope around the circle like communion wine.
(Scroll down for a related poem I wrote. I shared it on a recent community call and someone requested that I make it more publicly available.)
A Blessing for Those Who Don’t Know What Tomorrow Will Bring
by Heather Plett
Sometimes you feel so out of control,
Like you’ve climbed
Into the backseat of a car
And nobody can tell you
Who will drive
Or how treacherous the road ahead will be.
Your body and soul are worn out
From the waiting,
And this pendulum swing
From hope to despair,
Hope to despair,
Over and over again
Like a runaway carnival ride
That won’t let you climb off.
You’ve tried your best,
For yourself and for your people,
To soothe,
To protect,
To prepare,
To advocate,
And yet you live on this knife’s edge
Of uncertainty.
Tomorrow will bring what it brings.
And somehow you will find
The resources you need to greet it.
Somehow you will discover anew
The strength and courage that live
Within you and your people.
In the meantime, in this moment,
May your breath slow,
May your heart be still,
May your nervous system be soothed,
And may your body remember
How to take the step it needs to take.
May the ground be sturdy,
May your people be tender,
May the Mystery enfold you,
And may the seasons remind you
That nothing stays the same forever.