I got a few replies. FABULOUS, absolutely awesome!... I LOVE your creativity and energy... so inspiring!... How wonderful... great philosophy... I'll try... I can't guarantee anything... Hope to contribute.
Why is this unsettling? The enthusiasm and the compliments are lovely; the wariness understandable: people are busy as well as nervous about writing for public consumption.
I understand it because I guess I am experiencing it. I have stated publicly an intention to get this magazine and the Writers' Network off the ground, and now I'm sensitive to the feedback I'm getting. (And silence is its own kind of feedback: yikes!) But there's something deeper going on, I think.
I know the people who've responded. I know they are talented, beautiful, creative and inspirational. I also know that, in other words, they are relatively normal. And the feeling I get from them is that I'm asking for something extraordinary - which they think is great but very difficult, if not impossible. I get the sense that they feel as if they don't have the stories, the knowledge or the ability to create hope or to share it with others.
And if my friends have this response, then perhaps it's a wider experience, and this is what I find particularly unnerving. I'm unsettled by the idea that, culturally, we've lost track of how hope is created.
Not with greeting cards!
I hate greeting cards, or cards with little slogans written by Hallmark people who seem to have shifted life completely out of the realm of real human interaction into some milky-white, sugar coated parallel universe. I don't find them hopeful or inspirational at all, but I suspect that the idea that hope comes from meaningless sentimental affirmations has had a deeper impact. I suspect that anyone who thinks about writing a story that "inspires hope in others" (a la the guidelines for this magazine) and feels fearful about the prospect, may believe that hope comes from happy endings.This fairy-tale idea of hope has strong roots - or so we are told - but fairy-tales themselves were different things before Disney, Hallmark and the dominance of extrovert American superhero cheerfulness re-branded them. Think about Little Red Riding Hood. In the days when there were actually wolves in the woods, the story had a literal edge to it. It was a powerful strategy for getting young children to remember not to wander into the woods. Nowadays, there are rapists and thieves out in the "woods" at night, which parents are fearful of, so the message still has potent parallels. But that potency has been gutted by the Disneyfication of the fairy tale genre. Now, it is far more likely that a child would go into the woods and, when confronted by a wolf, be shocked and outraged because Red Riding Hood always survives and the point of the story is not that Red Riding Hood should be careful but rather that she is lucky and powerful and all little girls should be able to be lucky and powerful, too. This is about turning a cautionary tale into a piece of merchandise: a desirable fantasy figure.
After 9/11 that story was shaken, but held pretty firm. Hope was still linked to a commodified dream. However, in the face of the global financial crisis and the obvious failure of unchecked optimism ("Everything will be fine!") my experience is that people are looking in different places for hope.
Especially prevalent with regard to the environmental crisis, the trend towards localism and connection is unmistakable. These ideas define the "other" spaces in which people now look, more and more, for hope. My neighbour down the street or the friend I feel connected with even though we're thousands of kilometres apart (because we're both part of the same Permaculture network, or we're both fans of playback theatre) - it's these connections that offer hope and are re-aligning where we think hope comes from.
It's human
Prior to the fairy-tale concept of hope there was a history of people talking to one another. In that context, hope comes not from dreaming that perhaps one day you will be impossibly extraordinary, but from knowing that the friend you are sitting down to dinner with or see across the street knows something about your day-to-day life and she understands.
This is not a glowing, shining, star-spangled idea of hope. It is earthy. It's an old thing - a thing that has been, and is still done, I'm sure, around campfires, in pubs and in houses all over the world. People catch up and give each other a window into what's going on in their lives. This gives them a chance to give and receive empathy, to feel understood and respected. But contemporary media tends to be saturated with celebrity, sensationalism and opinion. None of it creates hope, and yet I worry that it has created the paradigm in which people try to remember or find stories to submit to Metta.magazine to "give others hope."
Hope is forward-looking. Sure. But in an interconnected world it is obvious that every experience I have is dependent on some other part of the social, natural, political and economic ecosystem in which I live. Everything that I get, then, comes from somewhere else. Everything that I create is ultimately given away. All my potential futures depend on these connections, so my hope depends entirely on feeling that these connections (in the present) are based on empathy, compassion, support, love - choose whatever word hits the spot for you. It is a fiction to believe I can get what I want without anyone else's help. So the greatest source of hope for me is an experience where I feel understood and respected.
This idea that hope is based on believing that right now my relationships are solid and real and caring (so I have hope that good things are possible) is perhaps directly opposed to the idea that hope comes from the idea that in the future everything will be different. People who are suffering terrible distress - in refugee camps, in violent relationships - may know that a different life is possible, but my feeling is that hope comes when some avenue to that life comes within reach. Even in dire settings, it is the sense of being connected, of mattering, that opens the door to hope.
In western societies, the most affluent demographic group is middle-aged men. The group most prone to suicide is also middle-aged men. Why? How could the group with the most direct access to "the dream life" be the most prone to killing themselves?
The group most prone to feeling isolated and disconnected (and therefore hopeless and suicidal)? Middle-aged men.
Hope is forward-looking. Sure. But in an interconnected world it is obvious that every experience I have is dependent on some other part of the social, natural, political and economic ecosystem in which I live. Everything that I get, then, comes from somewhere else. Everything that I create is ultimately given away. All my potential futures depend on these connections, so my hope depends entirely on feeling that these connections (in the present) are based on empathy, compassion, support, love - choose whatever word hits the spot for you. It is a fiction to believe I can get what I want without anyone else's help. So the greatest source of hope for me is an experience where I feel understood and respected.
This idea that hope is based on believing that right now my relationships are solid and real and caring (so I have hope that good things are possible) is perhaps directly opposed to the idea that hope comes from the idea that in the future everything will be different. People who are suffering terrible distress - in refugee camps, in violent relationships - may know that a different life is possible, but my feeling is that hope comes when some avenue to that life comes within reach. Even in dire settings, it is the sense of being connected, of mattering, that opens the door to hope.
In western societies, the most affluent demographic group is middle-aged men. The group most prone to suicide is also middle-aged men. Why? How could the group with the most direct access to "the dream life" be the most prone to killing themselves?
The group most prone to feeling isolated and disconnected (and therefore hopeless and suicidal)? Middle-aged men.
My partner, Lily, is at the moment writing a postcard to a friend, sending him news of her yoga business, a leaf from the bush behind our house, and a bindi from her trip to India. She is basically saying "This is me", which is much more hope-inspiring than any fairy-tale I know. It says: "I'm human; I think you'll understand, because I know you're human, too." It says, "Send me a postcard when you get the chance. I'd love to hear how you're going." In it is the offer of community, empathy, compassion and reciprocal listening - of being known and accepted. Hope comes from knowing that one's humanity is understood and respected.
I have another friend who says that her writing is typically dark and cynical, so she'll struggle to fit the criteria, and yet her observations (like her photos) are so well-constructed and sharp that I see it opening a window to her and through her to the world she sees. The view may not be saccharine, but the possibility of connecting with her is lovely, and here is a post of firsts that shows just how lovely, intimate and fun writing about beginnings can be.
So the creation of hope in the world is not about finding uplifting stories of fairy-tale endings or abnormally wonderful moments and then sharing them using stirring language and greeting card closing lines. It's my opinion (and the basis for this magazine) that hope is created through simply observing and sharing an experience in a way that offers the reader a chance to know one little thing about you. The challenge is just to let them know it: to describe it in detail and with clarity so that they can see it, smell it, touch it - know it - and through that one little thing know something about you... and through that see the shape of interactions that lead to compassion, understanding, empathy, and therefore to HOPE.
DO IT
Writing for Metta is easy.STEP 1: Take one interesting but not necessarily incredibly exceptional event and describe it, from start to finish, in detail.
(This might take between 200 and 2000 words. More than that you might be pushing it. If you go over 2000 words, go back and take out all the words that aren't describing the event. Most of them will be making judgments about the event or you or your mum or something like that. Take them out and just follow Step 1. The easiest - and hardest, it turns out - thing to do is to not put them in in the first place.)
STEP 2: Send to Tim at nolantimbo@gmail.com.
That's it.
Remember: it may seem ordinary to you but your ordinary is almost inevitably not ordinary to someone else. So take it describe it, celebrate it, and gently encourage someone to come across that invisible line that separates each of us when we are ignorant of what it's like to be the other.
My hope
I got an email reply from a friend in Nairobi which was wonderfully supportive. She was openly enthusiastic and willing to commit time when she could, even though she thinks of herself as "not a writer." After doing incredible work fundraising and collecting books and laptops to support education in Kenya, she is now (I think!) working as a teacher in Nairobi.
I have no idea what this is like and I'm sure most people don't either. Nor do I have any real comprehension of what a day is like for one of her students or fellow teachers. I have vague impressions pasted together from books, my own travels in southern Africa, and conversations with other teachers. But it's full of assumptions and misconceptions: rubbish, like so much of my interactions with the world.
Just getting her email made me feel better. I felt as if she understood what the magazine is on about, and believes that it's valuable.
Then I got excited - as I do. I imagined receiving submissions from kids in Nairobi who put together something about getting up in the morning, or their first game of soccer, or learning to ride a bike, or sending an email, or whatever it is that feels new and interesting to them.
I imagined putting that next to pieces by kids from Balingup Primary School. Balingup is in south west Western Australia, where I live. There are less than 400 people in the town. They grow lots of apples around here and there are scarecrows on most street corners. And there are kids getting up in the morning, playing their first games of soccer, learning to ride bikes and sending emails.
They might dream about being superman, starring in a movie and kicking the winning goal in the World Cup, but it's making friends, being understood and feeling cared for that will give them hope.
Me, too.
Be well and happy.
TN
