Who Do We Choose To Be?

No Hope No Fear

I have been encouraging people to explore the place beyond hope and fear for more than two decades.² (Seems to be what I most need to learn.) Because I always bring it up to audiences, I’ve learned that it’s the hottest hot button among us activists. Hope is the bedrock motivator for our work. It doesn’t matter how many inspiring quotes from heroic people I present, or the logic behind the advice to abandon hope. My experience is that we think that the opposite of hope is despair, and because we so desperately want to be of service and maintain our strength and energy, we do everything we can to avoid falling into the abyss of despair. We cling to hope to prevent the fall.

This is a place I am intimately familiar with—the abyss ...