Recently we attended an inspiring and interesting event at the Carter Center with former Irish President Mary Robinson, and saw a documentary about her life.
After being the first female president of Ireland and ushering in a spectacular transformation of rights in that country, she became UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and later participated in and chaired “The Elders,” an illustrious group of world leaders that included Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Carter, among many others.
Unsurprisingly, several questions from the audience asked how to keep hopeful and persevere through challenges.
She said Tutu was once asked why he was such an optimist. He replied, “I am not an optimist. I am a prisoner of hope!” He described hope as action. In addition, she encouraged us to have joy, humor, find safe spaces in friends and family, and to make changes in our own back yard. She also urged us to shut out the noise.
I asked when she had experienced challenges and how she got through them. She named two big mistakes she had made and said it was important to her to include them in her memoirs and in the longer version of the film we had just seen, because it is important to share our vulnerabilities and failures as well as our successes. She said at one point she was so overwhelmed she was near a nervous breakdown and she had to learn how to face the challenges without letting them destroy her.
I keep being struck by the admonition to choose joy. When Robinson entered the stage, she danced a bit and told us she had learned this from Tutu — to have humor and fun.
This seems a bit hard right now, but perhaps one of the most essential things we can do to keep from being overwhelmed by darkness and hatred that we see in the world is to choose joy. Robinson, Carter, Tutu and others of my heroes certainly did not turn their face away from the problems of the world, but they chose to face those with courage and find joy in each moment and hope for the future.
But, for a minute, let’s say this is stupid naivete and imagine there is no hope for the future. Let’s say we should, realistically, all be living in abject fear. Certainly, there is plenty of evidence of that. But what does it serve me to live like this? If all is lost, well, it will be what it will be. If things get better, I will rejoice. But in any event, my own life and the lives of those around me will be better for living in the light, rather than the fear of darkness.
Someone keeps saying to me “I don’t see Jesus in any of this.” I keep saying, “You ARE Jesus.” Christ has no hands and feet but ours. (Insert your own belief system here.)
We are keepers of the light, keepers of joy, keepers of truth and justice. Committing to love, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, requires deep courage. Let’s be prisoners of hope!
Just a thought…
Eileen