essay of hope

Essays About Hope: Top 5 Examples Plus 5 Prompts

No matter what happens in life, we all have hopes and dreams. If you are writing essays about hope, you can start by reading our top examples and prompts.

Hope is said to be “the remedy for grief and despair.” It allows us to long for better days whenever we are feeling down. When we are hopeful, it is as if we are trying to wish or manifest for something to happen; we sincerely anticipate whatever we are hoping for.

Hope is an important feeling since it keeps us optimistic, but like all things, it is not good in excess. We often get lost in our hope and let it delude us into thinking the most unrealistic things. It is good to hope, but you should not allow it to get the best of you.

5 Top Essay Examples

1. a reflection of hope by shannon cohen, 2. my hopes & dreams by celia robinson, 3. hope: the forgotten virtue of our time. by paul j. wadell, 4. an ideal of hope by jonathan belle.

• 5. ​​Hope and Reality by Greg Arnold

1. What Is Hope?

2. what do you hope for your future, 3. what makes me hopeful, 4. feeling hopeless in life, 5. how to help others be more hopeful.

“Hope is a fighter. Hope may flicker or falter but doesn’t quit. Hope reminds us that we are Teflon tough, able to withstand the dings, scratches, and burns of life. Hope is the quintessential “hype-man.” Hope will have you raise the roof, jump up and down, and rock side to side believing that you are magic, your dreams are within reach, and your life is greater than your present circumstances. We All Need Hope.”

Intertwined with quotes about hope, Cohen’s essay describes the many roles that hope can play in our lives. With hope, we can learn from our mistakes and improve ourselves. It fuels us to achieve our goals, helps us keep persevering, and inspires us. We are also the products of our ancestors’ hopes and dreams. 

“As I have mentioned earlier, everyone wants to become successful in the future. I do also; I want to go University, yet I haven’t decided what for so far. I want to grow up and make my Parents proud, especially when my Dad’s up there watching over me. I want to be happy. But every step I take, has the potential of changing my entire path, where my life is leading. So I must live life to the full, no matter what. Hope is something everyone needs.”

Robinson reflects on what she is hopeful for, recalling her childhood fantasies of living an idyllic, magical life. She discusses her dreams of going to university and making her parents, specifically her deceased father, proud of her. She hopes to live life to the fullest and for a better world. In particular, she hopes to see the day when cancer is no longer as severe an issue as it is today. Hope is important and is something everyone should have. 

“Hope keeps us from being so immersed in the good things of this world that we forget who we really are, a people on the move, pilgrims who are called not to stay put but to move toward the feast. Most of all, hope prevents us from becoming so comfortable with the pleasures of life that the possibility of a journey never even occurs to us.”

Wadell writes about hope from a Christian point of view; however, his message speaks to everyone. He gives readers a brief history of hope as a virtue in Christianity, saying that hope should be directed towards God and his kingdom. Hope allows us to appreciate all that is good in the world while keeping us longing for more. To nurture our feelings of hope, Wadell says that we must practice gratitude and spread hope to others. 

“Hope is important because hope involves the will to get there, and different paths for you to take. Life can be difficult and that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Yet, hope allows you to keep going down different roads, to see things different, and to try and make things for your perfect ideal. This hold true, even when there seems like there isn’t a solution.”

In this essay, Bell writes about his interpretation of hope: it is universal and gives us the will to work for whatever we hope for, not just sitting around and waiting for it to happen. For our hopes to be fulfilled, we must also put in the work. Bell also writes that you can strengthen your sense of hope by surrounding yourself with positive people and planning your goals. We are also called to bring hope to others so we can be hopeful for a better future. 

5. ​​ Hope and Reality by Greg Arnold

“Don’t be pessimistic and you have to remember that most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all- Dale Carnegie. Finally, it is acceptable to spend some time in hope but don’t live in it, you need to live in reality which is the way in getting things into results.”

Arnold’s essay explains the importance of keeping our hopes grounded in reality, not too optimistic yet not negative as well. We cannot predict the future, but we can at least yearn for the better and strive to work for it to happen. He believes that we should stop being so pessimistic about the world and dream big, for the hopes of many can be accomplished with hard work and determination. 

5 Prompts for Essays About Hope

The definition of hope can differ from person to person, as our experiences shape our sense of hope. In your essay, you can write about what hope means to you. Then, briefly explain why you are hopeful and what you hope for if you wish. You can also check out these essays about jealousy .

We all have our hopes and dreams for our futures. Reflect on hope and share what you hope for in your future and why you hope for it. Perhaps you hope for a long and healthy life or something as simple as hoping for a good grade on your test. The scope can be as small as a few days or ten years, as long as you can share your thoughts clearly and descriptively. 

For your essay, you can write about what makes you hopeful. Describe a person, memory, idea, or whatever else you may choose, and explain why it makes you hopeful. Many things invoke hope, so make sure your essay reflects your personal opinion and includes anecdotes and memories. For example, you may have a relative that you are inspired by, and their success could make you hopeful for your own future.

The world is not perfect, and we all feel despondent and hopeless from time to time. Look back on time you could not bring yourself to hope for better. Discuss what led you to this situation and how you felt. This may be a sensitive topic to write about, so do not go too in-depth if you are not comfortable doing so.

If someone you know is feeling hopeless, chances are you would try to lift their spirits. Address your essay to people who feel hopeless and give tips on improving one’s mental health: they can be as simple as getting more sleep or being outdoors more. For an in-depth piece, cite psychological studies to support your tips.

Grammarly is one of our top grammar checkers. Find out why in this Grammarly review .

For help picking your next essay topic, check out our top essay topics about love .

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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• Yale Divinity School

Reflections

You are here, theologies of hope.

This article is a shortened adaptation of a two-part “For the Life of the World” podcast on the theme of hope that YDS Professor Miroslav Volf posted in summer 2020, produced by the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. You can listen here to podcast Part 1 and Part 2 .

Fear, more than hope, is characteristic of our time. In the late 1960s, we were optimistic about the century’s hopes for the triumph of justice and something like universal peace, but that has given way to increasing pessimism. “No future” scenarios have become plausible to us. As I write in summer 2020, the coronavirus pandemic gives the dominant shape to our anxieties. But even before the pandemic, we feared more than we hoped. We feared and continue to fear falling behind as the gap widens between the ultra-rich and the rest who are condemned to run frantically just to stay in the same place yet often cannot prevent falling behind. We fear the collapse of the ecosystem straining under the burden of our ambitions, the revenge of nature for violence we perpetrate against it. We fear loss of cultural identities as the globe shrinks, and people, driven by war, ecological devastation, and deprivation, migrate to where they can survive and thrive.

Politically, the consequence is the rise of identity politics and nationalism, both driven largely by fear. Culturally, the consequences are dystopian movies and literature, and the popularity of pessimistic philosophies. In religious thought and imagination, too, apocalyptic moods are again in vogue. Hope seems impossible; fear feels overwhelming.

A Thing With Feathers

The Apostle Paul has penned some of the most famous lines about hope ever written: “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:24-25). Hope is a strange thing – as Emily Dickinson declares in her famous poem , it’s a “thing with feathers” perched in our soul, ready to take us on its wings to some future good. In fact, hope is a thing that has already taken us to that good with the tune that it sings. In hope – or perhaps by hope – “we were saved,” writes Apostle Paul. In hope, a future good which isn’t yet, somehow already is. A future good we cannot see, which waits in darkness, still qualifies our entire existence. We might be suffering or experiencing “hardship … distress … persecution … famine … nakedness … peril … sword … we are being killed all day long” (Romans 8:18, 35-36), and yet we have been saved and we are saved.

Interpreting the phrase “in hope we are saved,” Martin Luther suggested in his Lectures on Romans that just as love transforms the lover into the beloved, so “hope changes the one who hopes into what is hoped for.” [1]   Thus, a key feature of hope is that it stretches a person into the unknown, the hidden, the darkness of unknown possibility. For Paul this can happen because God is with us – God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that do not exist.

Hope vs. Optimism vs. Expectation

When I hope, I expect something in the future. I cannot hope for my 18-year-old son to know how to ride a bike, because he knows that already. But I can hope for him to do well in college, for that’s where he is headed in the fall. Without expectation for the future, there can be no hope. But we don’t hope for everything we can expect in the future. We generally don’t hope for natural occurrences, such as a new day that dawns after a dark and restful night; I know , more or less, that the next day will come. But I may hope for cool breezes to freshen up a hot summer day. We reserve the term “hope” for the expectation of things that we cannot fully control or predict with a high degree of certainty. The way we generally use the word, “hope” can be roughly defined as the expectation of good things that don’t come to us as a matter of course . That’s the distinction between hope and expectation.

The God who creates out of nothing, the God who makes the dead alive, justifies hope that is otherwise unjustifiable.

In his justly famous book Theology of Hope (1964), Jürgen Moltmann, one of the greatest theologians of the second part of the 20th century, made another important distinction, that between hope and optimism. [2] The source of the distinction relates to the specific way some ancient biblical writers understand hope. Optimism, if it is justified, is based on extrapolations we make about the future based upon what we can reasonably discern to be tendencies in the present. Meteorologists observe weather patterns around the globe and release their forecasts for the next day: the day will be unseasonably warm, but in the early afternoon winds will pick up and bring some relief; now you have reason to be optimistic that the afternoon will be pleasant, perhaps you even look forward to sailing your little 12-foot sloop on three-foot swells. Or, to take another scenario, you and your spouse are healthy adults of childbearing age, you have had no trouble conceiving, and the obstetrician tells you that your pregnancy is going well; you have reason to be optimistic that you will give birth to a healthy child. The present contains the seeds of the future, and if it is well with these seeds, the future that will grow will be good as well. That’s reasonable optimism.

Hope, argued Moltmann, is different. Hope is not based on accurate extrapolation about the future from the character of the present; the hoped-for future is not born out of the present. The future good that is the object of hope is a new thing, novum , that comes in part from outside the situation. Correspondingly, hope is, in Emily Dickinson’s felicitous phrase, like a bird that flies in from outside and “perches in the soul.” Optimism in dire situations reveals an inability to understand what is going on or an unwillingness to accept it and is therefore an indication of foolishness or weakness. In contrast, hope during dire situations, hope notwithstanding the circumstances, is a sign of courage and strength.

What is the use of hope not based on evidence or reason, you may wonder? Think of the alternative. What happens when we identify hope with reasonable expectation? Facing the shocking collapse of what we had expected with good reasons, we will slump into hopelessness at the time when we need hope the most! Hope helps us identify signs of hope as signs of hope rather than just anomalies in an otherwise irreparable situation, as indicators of a new dawn rather than the last flickers of a dying light. Hope also helps us to press on with determination and courage. When every course of action by which we could reach the desired future seems destined to failure, when we cannot reasonably draw a line that would connect the terror of the present with future joy, hope remains indomitable and indestructible. When we hope, we always hope against reasonable expectations. That’s why Emily Dickinson’s bird of hope “never stops” singing – in the sore storm, in the chilliest land, on the strangest sea.

Hope Needs Endurance, Endurance Needs Hope

We are most in need of hope under an affliction and menace we cannot control, yet it is in those situations that it is most difficult for us to hold onto hope and not give ourselves over to darkness as our final state. That is where patience and endurance come in. In the same letter to the Romans, in the same passage that celebrates hope and its transformative darkness, Paul writes: “If we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:25). “Patience” is here the translation of hypomone , which is better rendered as endurance, or perhaps “patient endurance.” 

Neither patience nor endurance are popular emotions or skills. Our lives are caught in a whirlwind of accelerated changes; we have little endurance for endurance, no patience with patience. Technological advances promise to give us lives of ease; having to endure anything strikes us as a defeat. And yet, when a crisis hits, we need endurance as much as we need hope. Or, more precisely, we need genuine hope, which, to the extent that it is genuine, is marked by endurance.

When the great Apostle says in Romans 8:25 that if we hope, we wait with endurance, he implies that hope generates endurance: because we hope we can endure present suffering. That was his point in the opening statement of the section on suffering in Romans 8:18: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” The hope of future glory makes present suffering bearable. But, in Romans 5:3-5, he inverts the relation between hope and endurance. There he writes, “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” Now endurance helps generate hope. Putting the two texts together, Romans 8 and Romans 5, we can say: hope needs endurance and endurance needs hope; genuine endurance is marked by hope; and genuine hope is marked by endurance.

The God of Promises

More than half a century after his Theology of Hope , Jürgen Moltmann has written an essay, On Patience (2018), about two aspects of patience we find in the biblical traditions: forbearance and endurance. Writing as a 92-year-old, he begins the second paragraph of this essay on patience autobiographically:

In my youth, I learned to know “the God of hope” and loved the beginnings of a new life with new ideas. But in my old age I am learning to know “the God of patience” and stay in my place in life . [3]

Youth and old age, Moltmann goes on to say, are not about chronology, but about experiences in life and stances toward life. Hope and patience belong both to youth and to old age; they complement each other. He continues:

Without endurance, hope turns superficial and evaporates when it meets first resistances. In hope we start something new, but only endurance helps us persevere. Only tenacious endurance makes hope sustainable. We learn endurance only with the help of hope. On the other hand, when hope gets lost, endurance turns into passivity. Hope turns endurance into active passivity. In hope we affirm the pain that comes with endurance, and learn to tolerate it. [4]

Hope and endurance – neither can be truly itself without the other. And for the Apostle Paul, both our hope and our ability to endure – our enduring hope – are rooted in the character of God. Toward the end of Romans, he highlights both “the God of endurance” (or steadfastness) and “the God of hope” (Romans 15:5, 13). Those who believe in that God – the God who is the hope of Israel, the God who is the hope of Gentiles and the hope of the whole earth – are able to be steadfast and endure fear-inducing situations they cannot change and in which no good future seems to be in sight. But more than just endure. Paul, the persecuted apostle who experienced himself as “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus,” was hoping for more than just endurance from the God of hope. Toward the very end of his letter to the Christians in Rome – in the second of what looks like four endings of the letter – he writes: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13). In the midst of affliction, the God of hope opens us up for the possibility of joy and comprehensive well-being.

Our salvation lies in hope, but not in hope that insists on the future good it has imagined, but in hope ready to rejoice in the kind of good that actually comes our way. The God who creates out of nothing, the God who makes dead alive – the God of the original beginning of all things and the God of new beginnings – justifies hope that is otherwise unjustifiable. When that God makes a promise, we can hope.

Miroslav Volf is Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at YDS and founding director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. He is the author of A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good (Brazos, 2011) and other books.

[1] Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans , edited by Hilton C. Oswald, volume 25 of Luther’s Works , edited by Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut Lehmann (Concordia Publishing House, 1972), p. 364.

[2] Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology , translated by Margaret Kohl (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991).

[3] Jürgen Moltmann, Über Geduld, Barmherzigkeit und Solidarität (Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2018), p. 13, my translation.

[4] Moltmann, pp. 13-14.

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‘Hope is a​n embrace of the unknown​’: Rebecca Solnit on living in dark times

We may be living through times of unprecedented change, but in uncertainty lies the power to influence the future. Now is not the time to despair, but to act

Y our opponents would love you to believe that it’s hopeless, that you have no power, that there’s no reason to act, that you can’t win. Hope is a gift you don’t have to surrender, a power you don’t have to throw away. And though hope can be an act of defiance, defiance isn’t enough reason to hope. But there are good reasons.

In 2003 and early 2004, I wrote a book to make the case for hope. Hope in the Dark was, in many ways, of its moment – it was written against the tremendous despair at the height of the Bush administration’s powers and the outset of the war in Iraq. That moment passed long ago, but despair, defeatism, cynicism and the amnesia and assumptions from which they often arise have not dispersed, even as the most wildly, unimaginably magnificent things came to pass. There is a lot of evidence for the defence.

Coming back to the text more than a dozen tumultuous years later, I believe its premises hold up. Progressive, populist and grassroots constituencies have had many victories. Popular power has continued to be a profound force for change. And the changes we have undergone, both wonderful and terrible, are astonishing.

This is an extraordinary time full of vital, transformative movements that could not be foreseen. It is also a nightmarish time. Full engagement requires the ability to perceive both. The 21st century has seen the rise of hideous economic inequality, perhaps due to amnesia both of the working people who countenance declines in wages, working conditions and social services, and the elites who forgot that they conceded to some of these things in the hope of avoiding revolution. The attack on civil liberties, including the right to privacy, continues long after its “global war on terror” justifications have faded away.

Worse than these is the arrival of climate change, faster, harder and more devastating than scientists anticipated. Hope doesn’t mean denying these realities. It means facing them and addressing them by remembering what else the 21st century has brought, including the movements, heroes and shifts in consciousness that address these things now. This has been a truly remarkable decade for movement-building, social change and deep shifts in ideas, perspective and frameworks for large parts of the population (and, of course, backlashes against all those things).

I t is important to say what hope is not: it is not the belief that everything was, is or will be fine. The evidence is all around us of tremendous suffering and destruction. The hope I am interested in is about broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act. It is also not a sunny everything-is-getting-better narrative, though it may be a counter to the everything-is-getting-worse one. You could call it an account of complexities and uncertainties, with openings. “Critical thinking without hope is cynicism, but hope without critical thinking is naivety,” the Bulgarian writer Maria Popova recently remarked. And Patrisse Cullors , one of the founders of Black Lives Matter , early on described the movement’s mission as to “Provide hope and inspiration for collective action to build collective power to achieve collective transformation, rooted in grief and rage but pointed towards vision and dreams”. It is a statement that acknowledges that grief and hope can coexist.

The tremendous human rights achievements – not only in gaining rights but in redefining race, gender, sexuality, embodiment, spirituality and the idea of the good life – of the past half-century have flowered during a time of unprecedented ecological destruction and the rise of innovative new means of exploitation. And the rise of new forms of resistance, including resistance enabled by an elegant understanding of that ecology and new ways for people to communicate and organise, and new and exhilarating alliances across distance and difference.

Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognise uncertainty, you recognise that you may be able to influence the outcomes – you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists adopt the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It is the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand. We may not, in fact, know them afterwards either, but they matter all the same, and history is full of people whose influence was most powerful after they were gone.

There are major movements that failed to achieve their goals; there are also comparatively small gestures that mushroomed into successful revolutions. The self-immolation of impoverished, police-harassed produce-seller Mohamed Bouazizi on 17 December 2010, in Tunisia was the spark that lit a revolution in his country and then across northern Africa and other parts of the Arab world in 2011. And though the civil war in Syria and the counter-revolutions after Egypt’s extraordinary uprising might be what most remember, Tunisia’s “jasmine revolution” toppled a dictator and led to peaceful elections in that country in 2014.

Whatever else the Arab spring was, it is an extraordinary example of how unpredictable change is and how potent popular power can be. And five years on, it is too soon to draw conclusions about what it all meant. You can tell the genesis story of the Arab spring other ways. The quiet organising going on in the shadows beforehand matters. So does the comic book about Martin Luther King and civil disobedience that was translated into Arabic and widely distributed in Egypt shortly before the uprising. You can tell of King’s civil disobedience tactics being inspired by Gandhi’s tactics, and Gandhi’s inspired by Tolstoy and the radical acts of noncooperation and sabotage of British female suffragists.

So the threads of ideas weave around the world and through the decades and centuries. There is another lineage for the Arab spring in hip-hop, the African-American music that’s become a global medium for dissent and outrage; Tunisian hip-hop artist El Général was, along with Bouazizi, an instigator of the uprising, and other musicians played roles in articulating the outrage and inspiring the crowds.

After a rain mushrooms appear on the surface of the earth as if from nowhere. Many come from a sometimes vast underground fungus that remains invisible and largely unknown. What we call mushrooms, mycologists call the fruiting body of the larger, less visible fungus. Uprisings and revolutions are often considered to be spontaneous, but it is the less visible long-term organising and groundwork – or underground work – that often laid the foundation. Changes in ideas and values also result from work done by writers, scholars, public intellectuals, social activists and participants in social media. To many, it seems insignificant or peripheral until very different outcomes emerge from transformed assumptions about who and what matters, who should be heard and believed, who has rights.

Ideas at first considered outrageous or ridiculous or extreme gradually become what people think they’ve always believed. How the transformation happened is rarely remembered, in part because it’s compromising: it recalls the mainstream when the mainstream was, say, rabidly homophobic or racist in a way it no longer is; and it recalls that power comes from the shadows and the margins, that our hope is in the dark around the edges, not the limelight of centre stage. Our hope and often our power.

C hanging the story isn’t enough in itself, but it has often been foundational to real changes. Making an injury visible and public is usually the first step in remedying it, and political change often follows culture, as what was long tolerated is seen to be intolerable, or what was overlooked becomes obvious. Which means that every conflict is in part a battle over the story we tell, or who tells and who is heard.

A victory doesn’t mean that everything is now going to be nice forever and we can therefore all go and lounge around until the end of time. Some activists are afraid that if we acknowledge victory, people will give up the struggle. I have long been more afraid that people will give up and go home or never get started in the first place if they think no victory is possible or fail to recognise the victories already achieved. Marriage equality is not the end of homophobia, but it’s something to celebrate. A victory is a milestone on the road, evidence that sometimes we win and encouragement to keep going, not to stop. Or it should be.

My own inquiry into the grounds for hope has received two great reinforcements in recent years. One came from the recognition of how powerful are the altruistic, idealistic forces already at work in the world. Most of us would say, if asked, that we live in a capitalist society, but vast amounts of how we live our everyday lives – our interactions with and commitments to family lives, friendships, avocations, membership in social, spiritual and political organisations – are in essence noncapitalist or even anticapitalist, made up of things we do for free, out of love and on principle.

In a way, capitalism is an ongoing disaster that anticapitalism alleviates, like a mother cleaning up after her child’s messes. (Or, to extend the analogy, sometimes disciplining that child to clean up after itself, through legislation or protest, or preventing some of the messes in the first place.) And it might be worth adding that noncapitalist ways of doing things are much older than free-market economic arrangements. Activists often speak as though the solutions we need have not yet been launched or invented, as though we are starting from scratch, when often the real goal is to amplify the power and reach of existing options. What we dream of is already present in the world.

The second reinforcement came out of my investigation of how human beings respond to major urban disasters, from the devastating earthquakes in San Francisco (in 1906) and Mexico City (in 1985) to the blitz in London and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. The assumption behind much disaster response by the authorities – and the logic of bombing civilians – is that civilisation is a brittle facade, and behind it lies our true nature as monstrous, selfish, chaotic and violent, or as timid, fragile, and helpless. In fact, in most disasters the majority of people are calm, resourceful, altruistic and creative. And civilian bombing campaigns generally fail to break the will of the people

What startled me about the response to disaster was not the virtue, since virtue is often the result of diligence and dutifulness, but the passionate joy that shone out from accounts by people who had barely survived. These people who had lost everything, who were living in rubble or ruins, had found agency, meaning, community, immediacy in their work together with other survivors. This century of testimony suggested how much we want lives of meaningful engagement, of membership in civil society, and how much societal effort goes into keeping us away from these fullest, most powerful selves. But people return to those selves, those ways of self-organising, as if by instinct when the situation demands it. Thus a disaster is a lot like a revolution when it comes to disruption and improvisation, to new roles and an unnerving or exhilarating sense that now anything is possible.

“M emory produces hope in the same way that amnesia produces despair,” the theologian Walter Brueggemann noted. It is an extraordinary statement, one that reminds us that though hope is about the future, grounds for hope lie in the records and recollections of the past. We can tell of a past that was nothing but defeats, cruelties and injustices, or of a past that was some lovely golden age now irretrievably lost, or we can tell a more complicated and accurate story, one that has room for the best and worst, for atrocities and liberations, for grief and jubilation. A memory commensurate to the complexity of the past and the whole cast of participants, a memory that includes our power, produces that forward-directed energy called hope.

Amnesia leads to despair in many ways. The status quo would like you to believe it is immutable, inevitable and invulnerable, and lack of memory of a dynamically changing world reinforces this view. In other words, when you don’t know how much things have changed, you don’t see that they are changing or that they can change. Those who think that way don’t remember raids on gay bars when being homosexual was illegal, or rivers that caught fire when unregulated pollution peaked in the 1960s or that there were, worldwide, 70% more seabirds a few decades ago. Thus, they don’t recognise the forces of change at work.

One of the essential aspects of depression is the sense that you will always be mired in this misery, that nothing can or will change. There’s a public equivalent to private depression, a sense that the nation or the society rather than the individual is stuck. Things don’t always change for the better, but they change, and we can play a role in that change if we act. Which is where hope comes in, and memory, the collective memory we call history.

The other affliction amnesia brings is a lack of examples of positive change, of popular power, evidence that we can do it and have done it. George Orwell wrote: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” Controlling the past begins by knowing it; the stories we tell about who we were and what we did shape what we can and will do. Despair is also often premature: it’s a form of impatience as well as of certainty.

News cycles tend to suggest that change happens in small, sudden bursts or not at all. The struggle to get women the vote took nearly three-quarters of a century. For a time people liked to announce that feminism had failed, as though the project of overturning millennia of social arrangements should achieve its final victories in a few decades, or as though it had stopped. Feminism is just starting, and its manifestations matter in rural Himalayan villages, not just major cities.

Other changes result in victories and are then forgotten. For decades, radicals were preoccupied with Timor-Leste, brutally occupied by Indonesia from 1975 to 2002; the liberated country is no longer news. It won its liberty because of valiant struggle from within, but also because of dedicated groups on the outside who pressured and shamed the governments supporting the Indonesian regime. We could learn a lot from the remarkable display of power and solidarity and Timor-Leste’s eventual victory, but the whole struggle seems forgotten.

We need litanies or recitations or monuments to these victories, so that they are landmarks in everyone’s mind. More broadly, shifts in, say, the status of women are easily overlooked by people who don’t remember that, a few decades ago, reproductive rights were not yet a concept, and there was no recourse for exclusion, discrimination, workplace sexual harassment, most forms of rape, and other crimes against women the legal system did not recognise or even countenance. None of the changes were inevitable, either – people fought for them and won them.

S ocial, cultural or political change does not work in predictable ways or on predictable schedules. The month before the Berlin Wall fell, almost no one anticipated that the Soviet bloc was going to disintegrate all of a sudden (thanks to many factors, including the tremendous power of civil society, nonviolent direct action and hopeful organising going back to the 1970s), any more than anyone, even the participants, foresaw the impact that the Arab spring or Occupy Wall Street or a host of other great uprisings would have. We don’t know what is going to happen, or how, or when, and that very uncertainty is the space of hope.

Those who doubt that these moments matter should note how terrified the authorities and elites are when they erupt. That fear signifies their recognition that popular power is real enough to overturn regimes and rewrite the social contract. And it often has. Sometimes your enemies know what your friends can’t believe. Those who dismiss these moments because of their imperfections, limitations, or incompleteness need to look harder at what joy and hope shine out of them and what real changes have emerged because of them, even if not always in the most obvious or recognisable ways.

Change is rarely straightforward. Sometimes it’s as complex as chaos theory and as slow as evolution. Even things that seem to happen suddenly arise from deep roots in the past or from long-dormant seeds. A young man’s suicide triggers an uprising that inspires other uprisings, but the incident was a spark; the bonfire it lit was laid by activist networks and ideas about civil disobedience, and by the deep desire for justice and freedom that exists everywhere.

It’s important to ask not only what those moments produced in the long run but what they were in their heyday. If people find themselves living in a world in which some hopes are realised and some joys are incandescent and some boundaries between individuals and groups are lowered, even for an hour or a day or several months, that matters. Memory of joy and liberation can become a navigational tool, an identity, a gift.

Paul Goodman famously wrote, “Suppose you had the revolution you are talking and dreaming about. Suppose your side had won, and you had the kind of society that you wanted. How would you live, you personally, in that society? Start living that way now!” It’s an argument for tiny and temporary victories, and for the possibility of partial victories in the absence or even the impossibility of total victories.

Total victory has always seemed like a secular equivalent of paradise: a place where all the problems are solved and there’s nothing to do, a fairly boring place. The absolutists of the old left imagined that victory would, when it came, be total and permanent, which is practically the same as saying that victory was and is impossible and will never come.

It is, in fact, more than possible. It is something that has arrived in innumerable ways, small and large and often incremental, but not in that way that was widely described and expected. So victories slip by unheralded. Failures are more readily detected.

And then every now and then, the possibilities explode. In these moments of rupture, people find themselves members of a “we” that did not until then exist, at least not as an entity with agency and identity and potency; new possibilities suddenly emerge, or that old dream of a just society re-emerges and – at least for a little while – shines. Utopia is sometimes the goal. It is often embedded in the moment itself, and it is a hard moment to explain, since it usually involves hardscrabble ways of living, squabbles and, eventually, disillusion and factionalism. But also more ethereal things: the discovery of personal and collective power, the realisation of dreams, the birth of bigger dreams, a sense of connection that is as emotional as it is political, and lives that change and do not revert to older ways even when the glory subsides.

Sometimes the earth closes over this moment and it has no obvious consequences; sometimes empires crumble and ideologies fall away like shackles. But you don’t know beforehand. People in official institutions devoutly believe they hold the power that matters, though the power we grant them can often be taken back; the violence commanded by governments and militaries often fails, and nonviolent direct-action campaigns often succeed.

The sleeping giant is one name for the public; when it wakes up, when we wake up, we are no longer only the public: we are civil society, the superpower whose nonviolent means are sometimes, for a shining moment, more powerful than violence, more powerful than regimes and armies. We write history with our feet and with our presence and our collective voice and vision. And yet, and of course, everything in the mainstream media suggests that popular resistance is ridiculous, pointless, or criminal, unless it is far away, was long ago, or, ideally, both. These are the forces that prefer the giant stays asleep.

Together we are very powerful, and we have a seldom-told, seldom-remembered history of victories and transformations that can give us confidence that, yes, we can change the world because we have many times before. You row forward looking back, and telling this history is part of helping people navigate toward the future. We need a litany, a rosary, a sutra, a mantra, a war chant of our victories. The past is set in daylight, and it can become a torch we can carry into the night that is the future.

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1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Philosophy, One Thousand Words at a Time

Authors: Michael Milona and Katie Stockdale Categories: Ethics , Epistemology ,  Philosophy of Religion , Social & Political Philosophy Word Count: 994

Hope is ubiquitous: family members express hope that we find love and happiness, politicians call for hope in response to tragedies, and optimists urge people to keep their hopes up. We also tell ourselves to maintain hope, to find it, or in darker moments, to give it up. We hope for frivolous things, too.

But what is hope? Can hope be rational or irrational? Is hope valuable? Is it ever dangerous?

This essay reviews recent important answers to these questions with the goal of better understanding hope. [1]

Karl Robert Bodek and Kurt Conrad Löw, One Spring, Gurs Camp, 1941

1. what is hope.

The typical starting point for analyzing hope is that it involves a desire for an outcome and a belief that the outcome’s occurring is at least possible . The sense of possibility isn’t merely physical possibility, for we can hope that, say, God perform some miracle that violates the law of gravity. Philosophers tend to think that a person can hope for anything they believe is possible (no matter how low the odds), though it is a separate question whether a hope is rational or not, and to what degree. [2]

But the belief-desire account of hope appears insufficient: we might desire an outcome, and believe that the outcome is possible, yet have absolutely no hope that it will happen! [3] A prisoner facing execution may desire a pardon, believe that a pardon is possible , yet be altogether hopeless that he will be pardoned. [4]

Hope, then, requires more than a desire for something and belief in its possibility. What else?

Luc Bovens argues that hope also requires positive conscious thoughts or “mental imaging” about the desired outcome: basically, fantasizing about the desired outcome occurring. [5] The prisoner facing execution thus hopes for a pardon only if he has pleasant thoughts or imaginations about being pardoned. If hope involves, beyond belief and desire, pleasant thoughts about the outcome occurring, we might be able to distinguish being hopeful for something from being hopeless about it: hope involves pleasant thoughts whereas hopelessness involves unpleasant ones.

Adrienne M. Martin questions whether Bovens’s view adequately distinguishes hope from hopelessness. She argues that a prisoner who is hopeless about the possibility of an overturned conviction may still desire the outcome, believe it possible, and fantasize about being pardoned. [6] To distinguish hope from hopelessness, Martin defends an “incorporation analysis” of hope: [7] the inmate incorporates his desire into his plans, believing that he has reasons to plan and act (e.g., with his lawyer) about the prospects of freedom.

But does hope really require that hopeful people believe that they have reasons to feel, act, and plan in accordance with their desire, as Martin’s view requires? Michael Milona and Katie Stockdale argue that it does not. [8] We sometimes wholly reject our hopes (e.g., to return to a previous bad romantic relationship), believing that that we have no reason for what we hope for. Rejecting a hope, or believing that we should not have that hope, does not mean that this hope is any less of a hope , contrary to what the incorporation analysis suggests: hopes we wish we didn’t have are hopes nevertheless.

Milona and Stockdale develop the idea that hope is akin not to a judgment, but rather, to a perceptual experience . Just as perceivers often judge their perceptions to be misguided (e.g., at magic shows), so too may hopers judge their hopes are misguided. Hope then involves, beyond belief and desire, a perceptual-like experience of reasons to pursue the desired outcome, or to prepare themselves for its possible occurrence. So, in hoping we may experience reasons to, say, return to an ex partner without believing such reasons exist.

In sum, there continue to be significant debates about the nature of hope, most notably what needs to be added to hope (if anything) beyond mere belief and desire.

2. The Rationality and Value of Hope

Hope is generally thought to be epistemically rational if one’s belief about the possibility (or in some cases, the specific likelihood) of the outcome is correct in light of the available evidence. [9]

Hope may be practically rational in a variety of ways as well. Hope is thought to contribute to well-being, motivate the achievement of goals, and inspire courageous action, among other things. [10]

Beyond epistemic and practical rationality, some hopes may even be rational because they are constitutive of who we are (e.g., a member of a certain religion), and to lose such fundamental hopes would be to lose part of our identity. [11]

3. The Dangers of Hope

Hope is not without risks.

Thwarted hopes can result in strong feelings of disappointment. Hope may also be a source of wishful thinking, leading people to see the world as tilting in their favor despite the evidence. [12] For example, hope that the problems of climate change will be effectively addressed might lead someone not to bother with climate change activism or to take any personal responsibility to work to mitigate it.

Hope can also be exploited, such as when politicians take advantage of the hopes of people in positions of powerlessness. For example, people who desperately hope for greater economic security may be influenced to accept policies that primarily serve the politician’s own ends rather than the people’s.

These and other dangers of hope might lead us to explore alternative emotions to hope. Stockdale argues that in the face of persistent injustices, bitterness (i.e., anger without hope) might be a justified emotional response. [13] The relevance of hope to politics and society has also inspired investigation of whether hope is a democratic or political virtue [14] and whether a form of radical hope is needed in the face of cultural devastation and other severe hardships. [15]

4. Conclusion

In a world where our needs and desires are so often met with uncertainty, hope tends to emerge. Philosophy has much to contribute to understanding this phenomenon, and the potential value and risks of hope to all aspects of our lives: personally, socially, morally, intellectually, religiously, politically and more.

[1] Only recently have philosophers given the topic sustained attention.  Some discussions of hope are found in the philosophy of religion (see Augustine, c. 420 [1999]), in existentialist writings (see Marcel, 2010), and in bioethics (see, e.g., Simpson (2004); Murdoch and Scott (2010); McMillan, Walker, and Hope (2014)).

[2] See Chignell (2014) for a discussion of Immanuel Kant’s defense of the rationality of hoping for miracles, divine grace, and a truly ethical society.

[3] Despair has long been considered to be the attitude which is the opposite of hope. This view traces back to St. Thomas Aquinas who argues that despair is the contrary to hope insofar as it implies “withdrawal” from the desired object while hope implies “approach” ( Summa Theologiae II-II.40.4).

[4] The claim that the standard account fails to distinguish hope from hopelessness (or in his terms, despair) is due to Ariel Meirav (2009).

[5] Bovens (1999).

[6] Martin (2013, 18-19).

[7] Moellendorf (2006) defends a similar theory.

[8] Milona and Stockdale (2018).

[9] Martin (2013, 37).

[10] See Bovens (1999) and Kadlac (2015).

[11] Blöser and Stahl (2017).

[12] Bovens (1999).

[13] Stockdale (2017).

[14] See Moellendorf (2006) and Mittleman (2009).

[15] Lear (2006).

Aquinas, Thomas. [1485] 1948. Summa Theologiae . Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. 5 vols. Benziger Brothers.

Augustine. [c. 420] 1999. The Augustine Catechism: The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Charity . Trans. Bruce Harbert. Ed. Boniface Ramsey. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press.

Blöser, Claudia, and Titus Stahl. 2017. “Fundamental Hope and Practical Identity.” Philosophical Papers 46 (3): 345–71.

Bovens, Luc. 1999. “The Value of Hope.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59 (3): 667–81.

Chignell, Andrew. (2014). “Rational Hope, Possibility, and Divine Action.” in Gordon E.

Michalson (ed.), Kant’s Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason: A Critical Guide . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 98-117.

Kadlac, Adam. 2015. “The Virtue of Hope.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 18 (2): 337–54.

Lear, Jonathan. 2006. Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation . Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Marcel, Gabriel. 2010. Homo Viator: Introduction to the Metaphysic of Hope . Updated ed. South Bend, Ind: St. Augustine’s Press.

Martin, Adrienne. 2013. How We Hope: A Moral Psychology . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

McMillan, John, Simon Walker, and Tony Hope. 2014. “Valuing Hope.” Monash Bioethics Review 32 (1–2): 33–42.

Meirav, Ariel. 2009. “The Nature of Hope.” Ratio 22 (2): 216–33.

Milona, Michael. 2018. “Finding Hope.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy , February, 1–20.

Milona, Michael, and Katie Stockdale. 2018. “A Perceptual Theory of Hope.” Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy 5.

Mittleman, Alan. 2009. Hope in a Democratic Age: Philosophy, Religion, and Political Theory . New York: Oxford University Press.

Moellendorf, Darrel. 2006. “Hope as a Political Virtue.” Philosophical Papers 35 (3): 413–33.

Murdoch, Charles E., and Christopher Thomas Scott. 2010. “Stem Cell Tourism and the Power of Hope.” The American Journal of Bioethics 10 (5): 16–23.

Simpson, Christy. 2004. “When Hope Makes Us Vulnerable: A Discussion of Patient-Healthcare Provider Interactions in the Context of Hope.” Bioethics 18 (5): 428–47.

Stockdale, Katie. 2017. “Losing Hope: Injustice and Moral Bitterness.” Hypatia 32 (2): 363–79.

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About the Authors

Milona Michael is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Ryerson University. His principal research interests are at the intersection of ethics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind. michaelmilona.com

Katie Stockdale is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Victoria. Her research is primarily in ethics (especially moral psychology) and feminist philosophy. kstockdale.com

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76 Hope Essay Titles & Examples

The hope essay examples below will come in handy if you’re exploring scriptures, Bible stories, or the concept of faith itself. Besides, our experts have prepared creative topics about hope for you to check.

🏆 Best Topics about Hope & Essay Examples

📌 most interesting hope essay titles, 👍 good hope titles for essays & research papers.

• “Hope II” by Gustav Klimt: Formal Analysis The painting is called Hope II, which indicates that the artist wanted to emphasize not the doom and sadness of the death of a child but the hope of the women depicted in the painting.
• “Hope of Children” Charity Organization Operations In addition, developing countries experience wars weakening the countries’ economy thus unable to provide for the basic needs of the less privileged in the society.
• Concepts of Optimism and Hope Hope is a feeling inherent in a person that stimulates him to move on, to believe in the best. I would also like to create a strong family, become a good person and do something […]
• Social Significance of Emily Dickinson’s “Hope Is the Thing with Feathers” This fact undoubtedly also influenced the work of Emily Dickinson, and it is in it that the social significance of the poem “Hope Is the Thing with Feathers” is reflected.
• Hope in the Christian Metanarrative Creation refers to the original period where God created the world and everything that is in it, with Adam and Eve living happily in the garden of Eden.
• Hope in Humanities Future The first area of concern is the consumption of world resources, which appears to be skewed in favor of the developed nations.
• Children of Men: Hope After Political and Moral Degradation The world presented by Cuaron is incredibly grim and desolate, and he convinces the viewer of total hopelessness through cinematic effects and the narrative of the film itself.
• Focusing on Faten’s Personal Choices as Presented in Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami Hence, Faten’s first appearance in the book allows the reader to understand the extent to which Faten is committed to her goals and faith: “She wore a gray, pilled sweater and an ankle-length denim skirt, […]
• “This Compost” Gives Hope and Makes People Think In the end of the poem the reader becomes sure that there is nothing to be afraid of the planet will regenerate.
• The Themes of Hope and Trauma in “Harry Potter” The inciting incident of the series is a giant man breaking down the door and telling Harry about his horrible legacy.
• Global Poverty Project: A Beacon of Hope in the Fight Against Extreme Poverty The organization works with partners worldwide to increase awareness and understanding of global poverty and inspire people to take action to end it.
• Installation of Hope in Group Therapy It is possible to establish that installation has a prominent force in the group through the NEO-Five-Factor Inventory which can be used to determine the viability of group hope.
• Nurses and Concept of Hope Nursing practitioners should try to encourage their patients and their caregivers to have this kind of attitude in the most desperate situations.
• Rebecca Solnit: Hope Is the Embrace of the Unknown This paper will seek to review the current LGBTQ social justice movement, aimed towards elimination of systemic discrimination, and test if Solnit’s assertion that the grounds for hope lie in the records and recollections of […]
• Making Hope Possible to Bring the Necessary Environmental Changes The persistence of various hazards and potential disasters can be regarded as some of the reasons for the exploration of the peculiarities of current communication patterns on the matter.
• Mankind — Doomed From Birth or Hope in Life To him this is a reflection of the sinful soul of man which indulges in different immoral and wicked thoughts and actions from the time of infancy.
• Cedric in “A Hope in the Unseen” by Ron Suskind In the school in Ballou, we see that good performance is scorned and yet he is struggling to be a good performer.
• Ethical End-of-Life Care: False Sense of Hope Another side of the issue is that patients and their relatives may frequently find it hard to accept that nothing can be done to improve their situation.
• Soaring Hope: Imagining Life as It Ought to Be The main message of the book comprises the values of hope, imagination, and optimism of Christians and the church in the world.
• The Hope Poster by Shepard Fairey I believe the poster I did could have made the fit in anti-drug abuse campaigns of the 1940s with ease, primarily because the artistic style belongs to the same period.
• “Beacon of Hope” Social Center in Savannah The majority of the people who are served by the Beacon of Hope Centre are the elderly, homeless, disabled, needy women and children.
• Dickinson’s “Hope” is the Thing with Feathers” Poem At the beginning of the poem, the first two lines introduce the bird, and the narrator describes it as the creature that continues singing “without the words”.
• “Hope” is the Thing with Feathers” by Emily Dickinson On the example of the selected poem, the author’s style will be discussed through the lens of her perception of the world. Further, the scheme of the poem will be considered.
• The Center A Place of Hope: Medical Organization The organization is affordable with the help of the treatment program that aims at working with the patients to achieve the best possible plan for treatment within their budget.
• Detroit Poverty and “Focus Hope” Organization There is a great number of factors and issues that lead to a certain part of the population to live in poverty.”Focus Hope” is an organization that tries to alleviate the suffering of those in […]
• Prototypical Symbols of Hope in Novels Probably the main aspect of how the theme of hope is being explored in James and the Giant Peach is that the author made a deliberate point in referring to hope in one’s life, as […]
• Correlation Study of the Relationship Between Individual Resilience, Hope, Stress and Humour This is advisable to ensure that the attitude, approach, and performance of individuals remain apposite and competitive within the organization. From these findings, it is possible to formulate a hypothesis thus; Hypothesis 1: That there […]
• Marketing and Strategic Plan: Hope Network Hospital Nurses and caregivers in the facility will be expected to embrace the best medical principles in order to support the slogan.
• Project Hope International The organization’s strategy in imparting knowledge among the young people of the community is mainly based on the principle that, the younger a person is introduced to information technology, the higher the chances of using […]
• A non-profit organization Angel of Hope As part of the obligation of the leadership team of Angel of Hope, it is possible to communicate unmistakably with donors and organizations that will present gifts and funds they require.
• Charity Organization “Hope for the Nations” Analysis It is also necessary to mention that it is easy to find information on the history of the organization. Though, the most important is information on the projects and the ways to donate.
• Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is a Camusian Absurd Hero, That’s to Say He Has No Hope Consequently, after posing his concern of suicide and life value, he notes that the voluntary death process indicates acknowledgement of the importance of suffering, and the lack of a weighty reason for living.
• Book Marketing Campaign and Competitive Environment It is necessary to analyze the target audience of this book or product, the elements of the marketing mix that have been included in its promotion.
• Hopes and Fears in Regard to the “Network Society” On the other hand, the importance of mass media and communication means has led to prevailing role of computers and other instant messaging devices over personal communication, and the resulting depersonalization of human relations.
• Theology of Hope: Moltmann and Pannenberg Based on the founders of the dogma, theology of hope analyses eschatology from the resurrection of the Messiah onwards rather from the creation of the universe.
• Traditional and Feminist Lens of Marvell and Hope
• Truth He Has No Hope Who Never Had A Fear
• The Hope for the Phoenix That Gave Optimism to the Life of Montag
• Tremendous Hope For Mankind
• The Roots of Debate in Education and the Hope of Dialogue
• The Pleasures Of Hope What Millions Died That Caesar Might Be Great
• What Is Our Hope For The Future
• The Republican Party Offers America its Best Hope for the Future
• Understanding Hope from the Bible’s Perspective
• Theme of Hope in Jane Harrison’s Play, Stolen
• Transitional Resources : Hope, Opportunity And Recovery
• Quasi Experiment Of Outcome Of Hope Program: Drug Abuse
• Understanding Hope and its Implications for Consumer Behavior: I Hope, Therefore I Consume
• The Myth Of Co Parenting By Hope Edelman Analysis
• Portryal of Andy as a Symbol of Hope in Shawshank Redemption
• Stem Cell: A Promise of Hope for the Future
• Treatments That Offer Hope To Hair Loss Sufferers
• Strong Female Characters in Sedgwicks Hope Leslie
• The World ‘s Greatest Hero Represents Ideals Like Hope
• Suffering on Hope: Comparing Prometheus and Io
• Unfortunate Irony “Hope” Ariel Dorfman
• The Concept of Hope in Little Princess, a Book by Conor Grennan
• There Is No Hope of Doing Perfect Research
• The Danger Of Hope By John Steinbeck
• Theologies Rooted in the Concept of Hope
• Hope Is the Most Powerful Force in the Universe
• The Cross Symbol Of Hope
• The Role of Hope, Spirituality and Religious Practice in Adolescents’ Life Satisfaction: Longitudinal Findings
• Some Hope For Americas Troubled Youth
• The Catcher in the Rye Is a Novel Which Evokes Hope and Despair for Holden Caulfield
• The Overall Tone of Hope Through the Word South in Last Poem, a Poem by Bo Juyi
• The Theme of Hope in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
• The Difference Hope Makes A Person Can Make Or Break Them
• The Valuation of Hope Value for Real Estate Development
• The Audacity of Hope: A Rhetorical Analysis
• The Techniques Used by Emily Dickinson in Hope is the Thing with Feathers
• The Relationship Between Hope and Adherence to Medication for HIV Patients
• The Untold Hope In The Slumbered Island Of Boracay
• The Concept of Reconciliation in Faith, Hope and Reconciliation, a Speech by Faith Bandler
• The Loss of Hope in Dante’s Inferno
• Thirteen Conversations about One Thing: Revealing Conversations on Change and Hope
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Holding on to hope is hard, even with the pandemic’s end in sight – wisdom from poets through the ages

Professor of English, Rutgers University - Newark

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As we begin to glimpse what might be the beginning of the end of the pandemic, what does hope mean? It’s hard not to sense the presence of hope, but how do we think of it?

Hope is fragile but tough, fugitive but tenacious, even adhesive. It sticks: Hope “ stayed behind/in her impregnable home beneath the lip/of the jar ,” wrote the ancient Greek poet Hesiod in his poem “Works and Days.” While the evils released from the jar by Pandora fly out into the world, hope remains.

Written in the 19th century, poet Emily Dickinson’s version of hope is “the thing with feathers” that “perches in the soul” and perseveres; it sings “and never stops at all.” Dickinson invites us to imagine Hope frail as a bird, fluttering. It doesn’t fly away – but that verb “perches,” suggesting that it always might.

That Dickinson’s hope “sings the tune without the words” might suggest that hope provides a general, even generic response rather than a specific remedy tailored to the occasion. Nevertheless, even in the sorest storms, hope is available.

Which isn’t to say that hope is always consoling. When we turn to hope, have recourse to hope or even hope against hope, it isn’t at moments of triumph or complacency. Rather, we need hope at moments when things feel precarious.

Once we recognize this simple principle, the intuitive truth that hope is a companion of anxiety turns up everywhere.

‘Intrinsically intertwined’

In 2018, the Rubin Museum in New York City mounted a participatory art installation entitled “ A Monument for the Anxious and Hopeful .” Artist Candy Chang and writer James A. Reeves asked “ visitors to anonymously write their anxieties and hopes on vellum cards and display them on a 30’ x 15’ wall for others to see .”

Tracy A. Dennis-Tiwary , a psychology and neuroscience scholar, notes that over 50,000 cards were submitted . The cards, writes Dennis-Tiwary, “reflected … immense optimism and fear. … It was not obvious unless you looked closely, but the juxtaposition of the two card types revealed a pattern: the anxieties and hopes were often the same. … The monument showed how anxiety and hope go hand in hand.”

Chang and Reeves write that “Anxiety and hope are defined by a moment that has yet to arrive.” Put another way, writes Dennis-Tiwary, “when we imagine and prepare for the uncertain future, anxiety and hope are intrinsically intertwined, forever transforming from one to another.”

Leaving despair behind

The Athenian dramatist Euripides was a peerless psychologist with a particular interest in the stresses of decision-making. His play, “ Iphigenia among the Taurians ,” is less a tragedy than a melodrama or romance, with a happy ending against the odds.

In the following passage, the resourceful Iphigenia – a priestess whose job it is to sacrifice foreigners who land on the shores of her captor’s island – is devising a complicated strategy to free at least one of her prisoners and thereby send a message to her family back home. She’s unaware, at this point in the drama, that one of the captives whom she’s supposed to sacrifice is her own brother Orestes. She has thought of a clever scheme, but the hope engendered by it, the very possibility of its success, also makes her anxious. Here’s my translation:

“People in trouble do not have a prayer of calm once they have left behind despair and turned toward hope.”

As with the plot of any exciting movie, we’re rooting for the good guys, and our hope is balanced by uneasiness. Suspense!

Iphigenia’s next words to Orestes are also acute:

“So this is what I fear: that you, once you have sailed away from here, will forget about me, will ignore my heart’s desire.”

Will the lucky winners, the survivors, forget about those who, having perhaps enabled them to escape, have been left behind?

This is Iphigenia’s entirely reasonable worry. Even the hoped-for and possible success of her scheme may have a downside. As Chang, Reeves and Dennis-Tiwary all point out, hope and anxiety are so closely intertwined that they may turn out to be different sides of the same coin.

‘Green shoots of hope’

Only two months after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and less than two months after President Joe Biden’s inauguration, hope is palpable; so is anxiety.

A year into the pandemic, spring is about to arrive. A recent New Yorker article notes that “ here in the city there are green shoots … who can’t imagine that happier days may soon be here again ?” The word hope isn’t mentioned, but a hopeful aura pervades the passage.

Yet nothing is certain. Trump and Trumpism glower in the wings and also in the political arena. New viral variants abound. There may be a light at the end of the tunnel, no doubt – but how long will that tunnel be? Hope requires patience.

In a famous passage in Plato’s “Republic ,” Socrates evokes the limitations of human vision by using the allegory of an underground cave whose inhabitants have never seen the daylight. The passage never mentions hope, but it does mention the reluctance of the prisoners, whose lives have been spent underground, to be dragged into the light, which dazzles their eyes.

Hope doesn’t go away, but it morphs and mutates. Have we become habituated to despair?

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• Emily Dickinson
• January 6 US Capitol attack

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187 Hope Essay Topics: Ideas for Definition Essays, Literature Papers & More

Hope is a topic that has been discussed throughout philosophy’s history and in all Western philosophical traditions. It plays a vital role in every aspect of human life, such as religion, politics, and relationships. Hope also enables people to handle events with a mindset encouraging them to look ahead enthusiastically and positively.

In this article, our expert team has collected creative and catchy hope titles for essays that will come in handy!

• 🔝 Top 10 Hope Essays Topics

✍️ Hope Essay Prompts

• 🔤 Definition Essay on Hope
• 🙏 Essay on Hope and Faith

📚 Hope Essay Topics for Papers on Literature

🕊️ more great titles about hope, 📝 essay on hope: outline, 🔗 references, 🔝 top 10 hope essay topics.

• The philosophy of hope.
• The impact of hope on society.
• Why is the concept of hope important?
• Hope from a psychological perspective.
• Why do hope and anxiety accompany each other?
• Hope in Kant’s studies.
• The cross as a symbol of hope.
• Hope: personal experience.
• How not to lose hope?
• Example of hope in literature.

Have you ever felt a lack of inspiration when writing a school or college essay about hope? Not this time! We have prepared creative essay prompts that will aid you in receiving the highest grades!

Is Hope a Blessing or a Curse: Essay Prompt

The Greeks considered hope the most harmful of all evils because it hindered people from accepting their fate. In addition, hope is concerned with what has not yet occurred. So, it is natural that the higher our hopes for the future, the greater our disappointment when they are unmet.

On the other hand, research finds that people are more likely to accomplish their goals when they have hope. In your essay, you can provide the advantages and disadvantages of having hope, analyze them, and come to a conclusion.

Prompt for Essay about Faith, Hope, and Love

Faith, hope, and love are central to Christianity. Some Christian churches consider them theological virtues , each reflecting principles that define humanity’s relationship with God. In your essay about faith, hope, and love, you can focus on the following aspects:

• The role of these 3 virtues in religion.
• Importance of faith, hope, and love in everyday life.
• The example of faith, hope, and love from your experience, a film, or a book.
• Key verses about these virtues in the Bible.

What Gives You Hope for the Future: Essay Prompt

Hope might be among the most challenging things to find in terrible circumstances, but one must cling to it when things get bad. Being hopeful means believing in a better tomorrow, even if today everything goes wrong.

If you need help determining what gives you hope for the future, consider these tips:

• Think about the ups and downs that you have experienced.
• Try to find things that make you happy and inspired.
• Create a list of items you are thankful for and explain why.
• Look for some stories of hopeful people or ask friends to share their experiences.

Why Is Hope Important: Essay Prompt

Hope is one of the most powerful emotions since it urges people to keep going regardless of what happens in their lives. It also provides motivation to pursue goals, no matter how difficult or unattainable they seem, and fosters a positive attitude toward daily issues.

To highlight the importance of hope, find the answers to the following questions:

• How does hope help people overcome difficulties?
• Why is hope one of the greatest motivators?
• What is the impact of hope on mental health?
• Why is hope a strength and protective factor?

🔤 Definition Essay on Hope: Topic Ideas

A definition essay aims to thoroughly explain a specific concept. If you’re looking for ideas for your definition essay on hope, here are some topics to consider:

• What is the definition of hope in psychology?
• The essence of hope in Christianity .
• Hope in Hinduism as a concept of desire and wish.
• The focus of hope on economic and social empowerment in culture.
• What does the term hope mean in Judaism ?
• Hope in literature as a motivating force for change in the plot.
• How can hope be defined in the healthcare industry?
• Hope as the perceived capability to derive pathways to desired goals.
• How did ancient people define hope?
• Barack Obama’s psychology of hope: definition and peculiarities.
• The emotional competency of hope in the modern world.
• How do different cultures define and value the concept of hope?
• The role of hope in art: from ancient to modern times.
• The interpretation and explanation of hope by different philosophical currents .
• How is the concept of hope reflected in the works of different eras and genres?
• The impact of AI technology on the perception and expression of hope.
• Hope in the educational process: features.
• How has the understanding of hope changed over history?
• The relationship between the concept of hope and a general sense of happiness .
• Hope in religious beliefs and its manifestations in believers’ behaviors.

🙏 Essay on Hope and Faith: Interesting Topics

Faith and hope are closely interrelated concepts. If you need to write an essay on hope and faith, check out our writing ideas:

• The link between faith and hope in psychiatry.
• Three Faiths: Buddhism, Shintoism, and Bahai Religion .
• How do faith and hope help people to deal with uncertainty?
• The influence of hope and faith on mental health.
• Hope and faith as a foundation for religious practice and rituals .
• Health Care Provider and Faith Diversity .
• What is the difference between faith and hope?
• The role of hope and faith in the healing process .
• Hope and faith as a source of moral values.
• Christian Faith and Psychology: Allies Model .
• How does faith nurture and sustain hope?
• The nature of faith and hope in different cultures .
• European and Greek Heritage and Health Beliefs .
• Hope and faith from a philosophical perspective.
• The influence of hope and faith on the decision-making process.
• How do religious communities promote hope and faith?
• Religious Beliefs and Political Decisions .
• Religious hope and faith in the context of a personal tragedy.
• Hope and faith: the role in driving social change.
• Social Influence and Its Effects on People’s Beliefs and Behavior .
• The role of hope and faith in overcoming depression and anxiety disorders.
• What do hope and faith have in common?
• Political Beliefs in Changing Leadership .
• The thin line between hope and faith in oncology.
• Religious hope and faith as a source of the meaning of life.
• How Beliefs Can Shape a Person’s Reality .
• Why is hope so important to our faith?
• The evolution of faith and hope in human life.

Bible Study Questions on Hope

• Why, according to the Bible , hope is not a fleeting feeling?
• What messages of hope are present in the Book of Hebrews?
• Marriage and the Family: The Biblical Ideal & Modern Practice .
• What does the Book of Romans say about hope?
• How does the Psalmist convey hope in the face of adversity and uncertainty?
• What role does hope play in the teachings of Proverbs?
• Similarities in Family Values: The Aeneid and the Bible .
• How does the Bible teach us to be confident in our hope?
• What is the connection between hope and repentance in the Book of Lamentations?
• Why does true hope come as a gift by trusting God ?
• Relation Between God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit .
• Which stories from the Bible can help us learn more about hope?
• How does the book of Psalms use poetic language to express feelings of hope?
• The Nature of God, Humanity, Jesus, and Salvation .
• What role does hope play in the teachings of Jesus?
• How does the concept of hope relate to the idea of forgiveness in the Bible?
• How does Noah’s story with the flood illustrate the notion of hope?
• Several Theological Perspectives in the Understanding of the Bible, Its Interpretation and Issues .
• What lessons about hope may be derived from the Israelites’ experiences in the desert?
• How does the Book of Revelation present a vision of ultimate hope?

Are you searching for hope essay titles in literature ? In the sections below, you’ll find topics about this theme in the poem “Hope” Is the Thing with Feathers and other literary works.

Hope Is the Thing with Feathers Essay: Topic Ideas

• “Hope” Is the Thing with Feathers as a hymn of praise to hope.
• The power of hope as a key idea in the poem.
• “Hope” Is the Thing with Feathers: critical features of the poetic tone.
• The metaphor of hope in Emily Dickinson’s poem .
• Hope as a feathered creature in the poem.
• The concept of hope in “Hope” Is the Thing with Feathers.
• Why does Dickinson represent hope in her poem as a living thing?
• The symbolism of feathers in the poem “Hope” Is the Thing with Feathers.
• The abstract form of hope by Dickinson: the use of imagery and figurative language .
• Soul as a hope’s home in”Hope” Is the Thing with Feathers.
• How does Dickinson describe the paradoxical nature of hope in her poem?
• The use of poetic devices in “Hope” Is the Thing with Feathers.
• The impact of Dickinson’s poem on readers’ perceptions of hope.
• Dickinson’s “Hope” Is the Thing with Feathers: comparison of hope and despair.
• The peculiarities of “Hope” Is the Thing with Feathers title.

Hope Theme in Literature: More Essay Titles

• The Diary of Anne Frank: how hope saved lives during the Holocaust.
• The theme of hope in Louis’s journey in Hillenbrand’s Unbroken .
• The power of hope in the face of difficulty in A Raisin in the Sun.
• How does the author convey the idea of hope in Jane Eyre?
• Orwell’s 1984: The theme of lost hope for the future.
• Disillusionment of hope in The Great Gatsby .
• “Hope” by Emily Bronte as a poetic interpretation of hope.
• The American Dream in the Play “Death of a Salesman.”
• The nature of hope in One Hundred Years of Solitude.
• Night by Elie Wiesel : the concept of hope as a lifeline.
• How is the theme of hope highlighted in Life of Pi?
• Hemingway’s works and their connection with hope in the face of adversity.
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: the hope for justice and equality.
• The value of hope and humanity in All Quiet on the Western Front.
• Romeo and Juliet: hope’s vulnerability in a world of quarreling families.
• How does The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry reveal the various perspectives of hope?
• The impact of hope on humanity’s future.
• How does hope help people cope with mental and physical disorders ?
• Personal Beliefs. Thought Control .
• Loss of hope: practical methods and strategies to stay motivated.
• The role of hope in students’ academic achievement .
• Hope as a source of energy and a positive mindset.
• The impact of hope on creativity in art and literature.
• Restoring Hope Counselling Home for Youth .
• How can hope assist in raising children?
• Hope as an instrument of adaptation to changes in modern society.
• Emotional regulation through hope: strategies and effectiveness.
• Supernaturalism: The Existence of God and the Meaning of a Human Life .
• How does hope aid in social progress and prosperity?
• The efficiency of hope in goal achievement.
• The Five Pillars of Islam and Its Major Teachings .
• How do people stay hopeful in the face of uncertainty?
• The influence of hope in business and entrepreneurship.
• Hope as a powerful motivator in conflict resolution .
• The relationship between hope and stress management.
• The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ .
• Hope and its influence on the development of emotional intelligence.
• How does hope affect the ethical issues of technological development ?
• The value of hope in the maintenance of positive family relations.
• The role of hope in sports achievements and overcoming difficulties.
• Positive Reinforcement Concepts Discussion .
• Hope as a factor in maintaining environmental awareness and responsibility.
• Hope and its impact on adaptation to technological innovations.
• Reason and Religious Belief. An Introduction to The Philosophy of Religion’ by M. Peterson .
• The influence of hope on the formation and maintenance of healthy habits.
• Hope as a source of recovery in medical practices.
• Positive Self-Talk and Its Impact on Athletes .
• The role of hope in the creation of a positive working environment.
• The influence of hope on the development of professional reputation and success .
• How do we use hope for financial stability?
• Argumentative Essay: I Have a Good Life .
• The relationship between hope and the ability to creatively solve problems.
• What role does hope play in the social integration of migrants and refugees ?
• The use of hope as a driving force in the formation of psychological stability.
• Managing Self-Defeating Thoughts .
• How does hope drive effective leadership and teamwork?

Hopes and Dreams Essay: Topic Ideas

• The economy of dreams: hope in global capitalism and its critiques.
• How did COVID-19 impact Australians’ hopes and dreams?
• The impact of drug addiction on people’s ability to hope and dream.
• American Dream and its Drawbacks .
• Hopes and dreams: common and distinctive qualities.
• The contribution of hopes and dreams to a sense of purpose.
• Sociology of Religion: Purpose and Concept .
• The efficiency of music in conveying emotions related to hopes and dreams.
• How do different cultures perceive and prioritize hopes and dreams?
• I Have a Dream Speech by Martin Luther King .
• The role of hope and dream in classical literature.
• The psychological side of unfulfilled dreams and hopes.
• How do hopes and dreams change across various generations?
• The use of realism and idealism in pursuing hopes and dreams.
• How can hope and dreams help to overcome post-traumatic stress disorder ?
• The opportunities and obstacles teenagers face in pursuing their dreams and hopes.
• History: In Search of the American Dream .
• Childhood dreams and hopes and the development of adult identity.
• How do social media shape individuals’ hopes and dreams?

Ideas for an Essay on Youth Is Hope

• The pressure of high hopes for young people in the 21st century.
• How do role models aid in instilling hope in young individuals?
• Youth Involvement in Political Processes .
• Young people’s political activism as a source of public hope.
• The youth as a driving force of any country or culture.
• Impact of Information Technology on Youth Development .
• The role of youth in breaking stereotypes and fostering hope.
• Youth and international relations : hope for peace in the world.
• The potential of young political leaders to justify the hopes of society.
• Educational Program for Young Nurses .
• Youth and gender equality: hope for a future without discrimination.
• The role of young educators in creating a hopeful future for the next generation.
• Youth as the backbone of society and hope for a better life.
• Young Adulthood and Millennial Leadership .
• How does technological progress inspire youth to be more hopeful?
• Environmental activism of young people: creating hope for a sustainable future.
• Youth as hope for creating solidarity and respect in society .
• Is it justified to place high hopes on the youth?
• Youth and inclusiveness: hope for the future of equal opportunities.

Wondering how to structure your essay about hope? Leave it to us! Here is a perfect outline of a hope essay for students with examples!

Hope Essay Introduction

The introduction gives your reader a clear picture of what your essay will address. It should include some background information on your problem and proposed solution.

Take these steps to create a perfect introduction:

• Start with an attention-grabbing hook .
• Provide some background information.
• Narrow the scope of your discussion.
• Identify your position.
• Outline the framework of your essay.

Thesis Statement about Hope

A thesis statement is a short sentence that introduces your paper’s argument to the reader. Here’s how to write it:

• Collect the evidence to back up your argument.
• Think of the significance of the facts you have found.
• Formulate your stance on the issue in one sentence.
• Make adjustments as needed.

The thesis statement is usually the last sentence of your introduction. Look at an example of how it might look:

Although it is impossible to stop yourself from hoping, it can become problematic when that hope turns into a delusion.

Essay about Hope: Body Paragraphs

The essay’s body is where you thoroughly explore your point of view. Each body paragraph should have one main idea or argument supported by examples and evidence. The structure of your body paragraph should look the following way:

• Topic sentence.
• Supporting evidence.
• The link to the next paragraph.

Check out an example of a body paragraph containing all these elements:

[Topic sentence] Hope is one of the most significant and strong feelings that a person can experience. [Supporting evidence] It propels us ahead in life, gives us hope for the future, and generally helps us feel better about ourselves and our lives. Furthermore, hope enables us to continue living despite the difficulties we face in life. [Transition] Yet, there can be too much of a good thing, as overreliance on hope can leave one disappointed and defeated.

Essays on Hope: Conclusion

A conclusion brings together the essential concepts covered in the essay’s body. It includes 4 main components:

• Rephrased thesis statement.
• Summary of key arguments.
• The broader significance of the topic
• Prediction, recommendations, or call to action.

Here’s how a rephrased thesis might look:

To sum up, it is acceptable to spend some time in hope but not to live in it. Instead, people must live in reality, which is the only way to achieve results.

We hope that our creative and catchy hope titles for essays have been inspirational for you! Besides, you can use our free online topic generator for more ideas!

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The Power of Hope, and Recognizing When It's Hopeless

Hope can alter how you view yourself..

Posted June 29, 2011 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

Hope structures your life in anticipation of the future and influences how you feel in the present. Similar to optimism, hope creates a positive mood about an expectation, a goal, or a future situation. Such mental time travel influences your state of mind and alters your behavior in the present. The positive feelings you experience as you look ahead, imagining hopefully what might happen, what you will attain, or who you are going to be, can alter how you currently view yourself. Along with hope comes your prediction that you will be happy, and this can have behavioral consequences.

Hope shapes your methods of traversing your current situation. The cognitions associated with hope—how you think when you are hopeful—are pathways to desired goals and reflect a motivation to pursue goals (Snyder, Harris, Anderson, & Holleran, 1991). Better problem-solving abilities have been found in people who are hopeful when compared with low-hope peers (Change, 1998), and those who are hopeful have a tendency to be cognitively flexible and are able to mentally explore novel situations (Breznitz, 1986).

Technically, hope does not fit the criteria as an emotion . These criteria include the concept that emotions are automatic and reflexive, they cause physical and behavioral changes as a result of nervous system responses, and that they provide you with immediate information about a situation that can lead you to take action.

Although the concept of hope does not meet these criteria, papers on the subject that have been published in reputable psychological journals have referred to it as an emotional state. Lazarus (1999), for example, has explored the role of hope as an emotion and as a coping resource against despair. Perhaps hope is better understood as a cognition that creates a certain mood—a prolonged affective state—lacking the immediacy and intensity of reflexive emotions, yet capable of determining one's outlook on life.

Having hope is to imagine a positive outcome. The directive of many motivational principles is to visualize what you want and imagine positive outcomes so that your behavior is unconsciously structured to create them. However, one does not need to turn to quantum explanations in order to account for the positive effects of hope.

Unconscious thought theory postulates that we are able to process information--to get your brain to work on a problem--in a non-conscious way that can lead to bursts of insight (Dijksterhuis & Nordgren, 2006). Most of the things we do are unconsciously processed. Thus, considering your endeavors before bedtime, or even going over your to-do list, is worthwhile since your brain is sensitive to your conscious perception of future events and will unconsciously work toward your goals.

Clinical drug trials are a good example of the power of hope. In clinical drug trials, a medication is compared with an inactive substance, commonly referred to as a placebo . Recent studies of antidepressants doubt their efficacy when compared to a placebo in double-blind, randomized clinical trials. What's most notable is that in clinical trials where the placebo is engineered to produced side-effects, causing those who take it to believe that they are on the actual medication, the efficacy of the placebo is similar to that of the medication (Angell, 2011). In a discussion of these studies a friend suggested that, rather than referring to such inactive substances as a placebo, they should instead be called "hope."

The way in which a hopeful person handles disappointment differs from those who are not. Even if the present is unpleasant, the thought of a positive future can be stress -buffering and can reduce the impact of negative events or disappointment. Being unrelentingly optimistic about the future helps you to recognize that you are adaptable and capable, enabling you to reassure yourself that you will get through a tough time. Having a powerful hope that you will adapt also provides a limitlessly positive version of the future. Those who are hopeful and optimistic can make excuses for negative outcomes, while the pessimist may become resentful or negatively preoccupied.

In relationships, there are times when abandoning hope is psychologically healthier than holding onto it. My co-author and I wrote about such situations in our book, The White Knight Syndrome: Rescuing Yourself From Your Need to Rescue Others (Lamia & Krieger, 2009).

In ending a relationship, relinquishing hope means coming to terms with your failure. In a rescuing relationship, hope may have led you to assume that you could help your partner achieve his expressed goal: be it financial success, sobriety, security, or happiness . Yet despite your efforts, you could not control whether or not he would be inclined to pursue your perception of a desirable path. Perhaps your hope was that your partner would become the one you wanted or wished him to be, and he would then need, love, and appreciate you. Relinquishing hope is hard to do because it means that you have failed to get what you expected from your relationship.

The feelings associated with giving up hope in a relationship are often the very same emotions you sought to avoid in the first place, including helplessness, despair, depression , or yearning that are the negative counterparts of hope (Lazarus 1999). Yet giving up hope can also be very constructive and positive, depending on your attitude.

Giving up hope is sometimes prudent in situations where turning your attention elsewhere is necessary in order to actually reach your goal. Continuing to pursue a particular direction where you invariably encounter roadblocks, whether in a relationship, career , or business venture, can obscure other avenues that may lead to achieving an objective.

In our culture, there is a particular glamour attributed to those who persist and win, in spite of limited hope for success. At the same time, having the strength to recognize when hope should be relinquished, and the courage to acknowledge your helplessness, can point you in an unsullied direction that is accompanied by new hope.

For more information regarding my books about emotions, see my website .

This blog post is in no way intended as a substitute for medical or psychological counseling. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Angell, M. (2011). The epidemic of mental illness: Why? The New York Review of Books . Retrieved from: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jun/23/epidemic-mental-il…

Breznitz, S. (1986). The effect of hope on coping with stress. In M. H. Appley & R. Trumbull (Eds.), Dynamics of stress: Physiological, psychological, and social perspectives . (pp. 295-306). New York: Plenum Press.

Dijksterhuis, A., & Nordgren, L. F. (2006). A theory of unconscious thought. Perspectives on Psychological Science . 1, 95-109.

Lamia, M. & Krieger, M. (2009) T he White Knight Syndrome: Rescuing Yourself From Your Need to Rescue Others . Oakland: New Harbinger.

Lazarus, R. S. (1999). Hope: An emotion and a vital coping resource against despair. Social Research . 66, 653-678.

Snyder, C. R., Harris, C., Anderson, J. R., & Holleran, S. A. (1991). The will and the ways: Development and validation of an individual differences measure of hope. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . 60, 570-585.

Mary C. Lamia , Ph.D. , is a clinical psychologist in Marin County, California.

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Essays on Hope

Writing a hope essay will remind you that any ordeal is easier to bear if you believe in future relief, in other words, if there is hope. We start each day with hope, without even realizing it. Hope motivates us to live. We hope for something better even when nothing is certain, when there are difficulties ahead, because hope is essentially the expectation that all bad things will be overcome – many hope essay samples mention this point. We all hope that tomorrow will be better than yesterday. Hope essays emphasize that people cannot live without hope, so we must try not to despair even in the most difficult situations. Romans had a saying: dum spiro spero, which means “while I breathe, I hope” – it’s a great motto to live by. Check out samples of essays on hope below for ideas to include in your essay.

Having none or fewer symptoms and being back to how your life was before without the illness is clinical recovery. Personal healing is a unique, deeply personal process of transforming one’s values, attitudes, skills, goals, and roles to better ones. Individual recovery is living a contributing, satisfying, and hopeful life...

Spirituality is critical in the delivery of care since it affects the decisions made and patient’s perception on the care plan.  Spiritual evaluation is the procedure of determining patient’s spiritual needs concerning health. The process assists caregivers to understand patients’ faith, needs, values and biases as linked to health care....

Words: 1163

The art of embracing an optimistic mindset regardless of the circumstances at hand describes extensively the virtue of hope (MacInnis a person who will give them a reason to smile trough the ugly phases of the life that they face; and actualize the significance of hope in them....

Words: 1739

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The American dream, a long-standing vision, reflects the hope that through hard work and commitment, one will achieve political strength, economic prosperity, and endless love. During the Roaring Twenties, people put up masks to hide who they really were. Fitzgerald conveys in Great Gatsby that the American dream is a...

The first clue to the plot of a story is continually the title. I have read a great number of books the place the author had to take the reader deep into twenty pages of reading to realize what the e book was about. Tricia Downing on the other hand...

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Hope — The Meaning of Hope and Its Role in Our Life

The Meaning of Hope and Its Role in Our Life

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Published: Dec 3, 2020

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The US sees itself as a unique country and as “a city upon a hill”, which means the U.S sees itself as a beacon of hope because they accept everyone which is in a way unique compared to other countries. The U.S was at one point [...]

tells the gripping tale of two individuals, Salva and Nya, whose lives intertwine in unexpected ways amidst the backdrop of war-torn South Sudan. The novel weaves together their stories of survival, resilience, and hope, [...]

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Essay on Hope And Positivity

Students are often asked to write an essay on Hope And Positivity in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Hope And Positivity

The power of hope.

Hope is like a tiny seed that grows into a strong tree. It means believing that good things will happen. When we hope, we see a light even when it’s dark. We think, “Yes, I can do this!” Hope helps us keep trying, even when tasks are hard.

Staying Positive

Positivity is like a happy song that makes us dance. It’s thinking about the good, not just the bad. When we are positive, we smile more and worry less. Positivity is catching; it spreads from one person to another, making everyone feel better.

Hope and Positivity Together

Hope and positivity are best friends. They hold hands and lift us up. Together, they give us the power to face any problem and find joy in every day. They remind us that after rain comes a rainbow.

250 Words Essay on Hope And Positivity

What is hope.

Hope is like a light in our hearts that keeps us going when things are tough. It’s believing that good things will happen even when we can’t see them yet. Imagine you have a small plant. You water it and give it sunlight because you hope it will grow into a big, beautiful flower. That’s what hope is. It’s caring for your dreams and expecting them to blossom.

The Power of Positivity

Positivity is like a superpower we all have. It means looking for the good in everything around us. When you wake up to a rainy day, instead of being sad, you’re happy because the rain helps plants grow. Positivity helps us see the best in people and situations. It’s like wearing glasses that make the world look brighter.

When we mix hope and positivity, something magical happens. We start to believe in ourselves and our future. This mix makes us feel like we can jump over any hurdle. If you miss a goal in soccer, hope tells you that you’ll get another chance, and positivity cheers you on to keep trying.

Spreading the Light

Hope and positivity are not just feelings; they’re like a cozy blanket we can share with others. When you show hope and stay positive, your friends and family can feel it too. It’s like when someone smiles at you, and you can’t help but smile back. Sharing hope and positivity makes the world a happier place for everyone.

In conclusion, hope and positivity are important for everyone. They help us face our fears and keep us happy. Just like the sun after a storm, they remind us that better days are always ahead.

500 Words Essay on Hope And Positivity

Imagine you are in a dark room and you see a tiny point of light. That light is like hope. Hope is believing that something good will happen even when things are not going well. It’s like having a little voice inside you that says, “Things will get better.” When you hope, you think about the good things that can come, not just the bad things that are happening now.

Positivity is like hope’s best friend. It means looking at the bright side and expecting good things. When you are positive, you smile more, you feel better, and you can make others feel good too. It’s like when you see a glass with water up to the middle, and you say it’s half full, not half empty. Being positive helps you to keep going, even when tasks are tough.

Hope and Positivity in Everyday Life

Every day, you might face small problems, like a hard homework question or a rainy day when you wanted to play outside. Hope and positivity can turn these problems into chances to learn and grow. If you stay hopeful, you might find a new way to solve that homework problem. If you stay positive, you can enjoy splashing in puddles instead of being sad about the rain.

Hope and Positivity in Tough Times

Sometimes, life can give us big challenges, like when a family member is sick or a friend moves away. During these times, hope and positivity are like tiny seeds that can grow into strong trees. They help us believe that we can get through the hard times. They remind us to look for the good moments, like the laughter of a friend or the warmth of a hug.

Sharing Hope and Positivity

Hope and positivity are not just for keeping to yourself. They are even better when you share them. When you tell a friend, “You can do it!” or “I believe in you,” you are giving them hope. When you smile at someone who looks sad, you are spreading positivity. It’s like passing a ball in a game – the more you pass it, the better the game goes.

Keeping Hope and Positivity Alive

To keep hope and positivity alive, you can do simple things. You can write down one good thing that happens each day. You can say thank you for the small things, like your favorite food or a sunny day. You can also help others, which makes both you and them feel good. It’s like watering a plant – it helps it grow and stay green.

Hope and positivity are like a flashlight and a map in the journey of life. They help you see where you are going and to keep moving forward. They make the journey fun, even when there are obstacles. Remember, no matter what happens, there is always a reason to hope and stay positive. And just like the tiny point of light in the dark room, they can guide you to a brighter tomorrow.

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Finding Hope Amidst Challenges: the Essence of Optimism

This essay about navigating life’s trials and tribulations with unwavering hope and optimism. It explores how challenges serve as opportunities for growth and resilience, emphasizing the importance of embracing uncertainty and reframing setbacks. Through fostering community, self-care, and a positive mindset, individuals can cultivate resilience in the face of adversity. The essay underscores the transformative power of optimism, portraying it as a guiding light amidst life’s darkest moments. Ultimately, it champions the philosophy of optimism as a way of life, empowering individuals to face challenges with courage and grace.

How it works

In the vast tapestry of existence, where each thread represents a unique journey, hope emerges as the golden filament that binds us all together. Optimism, like a rare gem hidden amidst the rubble, shines brightest in the face of adversity, illuminating the path forward with its iridescent glow. Amidst the cacophony of life’s trials and tribulations, discovering hope becomes not just a quest, but a sacred endeavor—a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the indomitable power of positivity.

Optimism, far from being a mere facade or fleeting emotion, is a profound philosophy—a way of seeing the world through the lens of possibility, even when clouds obscure the sun. It is the unwavering belief that within every challenge lies an opportunity, within every setback, a hidden treasure waiting to be unearthed. It is the audacious hope that propels us forward, even when the path ahead seems shrouded in darkness.

Life’s challenges, diverse and daunting as they may be, serve as the crucible in which optimism is forged. From personal struggles to global crises, each obstacle presents an opportunity for growth, a chance to cultivate resilience and fortitude. It is amidst the storm that the true essence of optimism is revealed—not as a fleeting emotion, but as a steadfast resolve to persevere, to endure, and to thrive against all odds.

Finding hope amidst challenges requires a radical shift in perspective—a willingness to embrace uncertainty and ambiguity with open arms. It is about reframing setbacks as stepping stones, failures as lessons, and obstacles as opportunities for innovation. It is about recognizing that the darkest nights often precede the most glorious dawns and that every storm eventually gives way to sunshine.

Moreover, optimism flourishes in the fertile soil of community and connection. In times of hardship, reaching out to others for support, empathy, and encouragement can reignite the flickering flame of hope within us. Whether through acts of kindness, words of affirmation, or simply lending a listening ear, the collective strength of human compassion has the power to uplift spirits and instill a sense of hope even in the darkest of hours.

Furthermore, nurturing optimism requires a commitment to self-care and personal growth. Engaging in practices such as mindfulness, gratitude, and positive self-talk can cultivate a resilient mindset capable of weathering life’s storms with grace and resilience. By prioritizing our physical, emotional, and mental well-being, we fortify ourselves against the onslaught of negativity and despair, allowing hope to bloom within us like a resilient flower in the harshest of climates.

In essence, finding hope amidst challenges is not about denying the existence of hardship or turning a blind eye to reality. It is about embracing life’s uncertainties with courage and conviction, trusting in our ability to overcome whatever obstacles may come our way. It is about recognizing that within every challenge lies the potential for growth, resilience, and transformation.

In the words of Maya Angelou, “Hope and optimism are essential to any kind of resilience.” In a world that often feels fragmented and uncertain, optimism serves as our guiding light, our beacon of hope in the darkness. So let us embrace optimism as not just a fleeting emotion, but as a way of life—a philosophy that empowers us to navigate life’s challenges with grace, courage, and unwavering hope. For it is through the lens of optimism that we discover the true essence of resilience, the boundless potential of the human spirit, and the infinite possibilities that await us on the journey ahead.

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Francis Collins: Why I’m going public with my prostate cancer diagnosis

I served medical research. now it’s serving me. and i don’t want to waste time..

Over my 40 years as a physician-scientist, I’ve had the privilege of advising many patients facing serious medical diagnoses. I’ve seen them go through the excruciating experience of waiting for the results of a critical blood test, biopsy or scan that could dramatically affect their future hopes and dreams.

But this time, I was the one lying in the PET scanner as it searched for possible evidence of spread of my aggressive prostate cancer . I spent those 30 minutes in quiet prayer. If that cancer had already spread to my lymph nodes, bones, lungs or brain, it could still be treated — but it would no longer be curable.

Why am I going public about this cancer that many men are uncomfortable talking about? Because I want to lift the veil and share lifesaving information, and I want all men to benefit from the medical research to which I’ve devoted my career and that is now guiding my care.

Five years before that fateful PET scan, my doctor had noted a slow rise in my PSA, the blood test for prostate-specific antigen. To contribute to knowledge and receive expert care, I enrolled in a clinical trial at the National Institutes of Health, the agency I led from 2009 through late 2021.

At first, there wasn’t much to worry about — targeted biopsies identified a slow-growing grade of prostate cancer that doesn’t require treatment and can be tracked via regular checkups, referred to as “active surveillance.” This initial diagnosis was not particularly surprising. Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men in the United States, and about 40 percent of men over age 65 — I’m 73 — have low-grade prostate cancer . Many of them never know it, and very few of them develop advanced disease.

Why am I going public about this cancer that many men are uncomfortable talking about? Because I want to lift the veil and share lifesaving information.

But in my case, things took a turn about a month ago when my PSA rose sharply to 22 — normal at my age is less than 5. An MRI scan showed that the tumor had significantly enlarged and might have even breached the capsule that surrounds the prostate, posing a significant risk that the cancer cells might have spread to other parts of the body.

New biopsies taken from the mass showed transformation into a much more aggressive cancer. When I heard the diagnosis was now a 9 on a cancer-grading scale that goes only to 10, I knew that everything had changed.

Thus, that PET scan, which was ordered to determine if the cancer had spread beyond the prostate, carried high significance. Would a cure still be possible, or would it be time to get my affairs in order? A few hours later, when my doctors showed me the scan results, I felt a rush of profound relief and gratitude. There was no detectable evidence of cancer outside of the primary tumor.

Later this month, I will undergo a radical prostatectomy — a procedure that will remove my entire prostate gland. This will be part of the same NIH research protocol — I want as much information as possible to be learned from my case, to help others in the future.

While there are no guarantees, my doctors believe I have a high likelihood of being cured by the surgery.

My situation is far better than my father’s when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer four decades ago. He was about the same age that I am now, but it wasn’t possible back then to assess how advanced the cancer might be. He was treated with a hormonal therapy that might not have been necessary and had a significant negative impact on his quality of life.

Because of research supported by NIH, along with highly effective collaborations with the private sector, prostate cancer can now be treated with individualized precision and improved outcomes.

As in my case, high-resolution MRI scans can now be used to delineate the precise location of a tumor. When combined with real-time ultrasound, this allows pinpoint targeting of the prostate biopsies. My surgeon will be assisted by a sophisticated robot named for Leonardo da Vinci that employs a less invasive surgical approach than previous techniques, requiring just a few small incisions.

Advances in clinical treatments have been informed by large-scale, rigorously designed trials that have assessed the risks and benefits and were possible because of the willingness of cancer patients to enroll in such trials.

I feel compelled to tell this story openly. I hope it helps someone. I don’t want to waste time.

If my cancer recurs, the DNA analysis that has been carried out on my tumor will guide the precise choice of therapies. As a researcher who had the privilege of leading the Human Genome Project , it is truly gratifying to see how these advances in genomics have transformed the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

I want all men to have the same opportunity that I did. Prostate cancer is still the No. 2 cancer killer among men. I want the goals of the Cancer Moonshot to be met — to end cancer as we know it. Early detection really matters, and when combined with active surveillance can identify the risky cancers like mine, and leave the rest alone. The five-year relative survival rate for prostate cancer is 97 percent, according to the American Cancer Society , but it’s only 34 percent if the cancer has spread to distant areas of the body.

But lack of information and confusion about the best approach to prostate cancer screening have impeded progress. Currently, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends that all men age 55 to 69 discuss PSA screening with their primary-care physician, but it recommends against starting PSA screening after age 70.

Other groups, like the American Urological Association , suggest that screening should start earlier, especially for men with a family history — like me — and for African American men, who have a higher risk of prostate cancer. But these recommendations are not consistently being followed.

Our health-care system is afflicted with health inequities. For example, the image-guided biopsies are not available everywhere and to everyone. Finally, many men are fearful of the surgical approach to prostate cancer because of the risk of incontinence and impotence, but advances in surgical techniques have made those outcomes considerably less troublesome than in the past. Similarly, the alternative therapeutic approaches of radiation and hormonal therapy have seen significant advances.

A little over a year ago, while I was praying for a dying friend, I had the experience of receiving a clear and unmistakable message. This has almost never happened to me. It was just this: “Don’t waste your time, you may not have much left.” Gulp.

Having now received a diagnosis of aggressive prostate cancer and feeling grateful for all the ways I have benefited from research advances, I feel compelled to tell this story openly. I hope it helps someone. I don’t want to waste time.

Francis S. Collins served as director of the National Institutes of Health from 2009 to 2021 and as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at NIH from 1993 to 2008. He is a physician-geneticist and leads a White House initiative to eliminate hepatitis C in the United States, while also continuing to pursue his research interests as a distinguished NIH investigator.

An earlier version of this article said prostate cancer is the No. 2 killer of men. It is the No. 2 cause of cancer death among men. The article has been updated.

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Moscow, like other international urban areas , is decentralizing, despite considerable barriers. The expansion will lead to even more decentralization, which is likely to lead to less time "stuck in traffic" and more comfortable lifestyles. Let's hope that Russia's urban development policies, along with its plans to restore population growth, will lead to higher household incomes and much improved economic performance.

Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “ War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life ”

Note 1: The 23 ward (ku) area of Tokyo is the geography of the former city of Tokyo, which was abolished in the 1940s. There is considerable confusion about the geography of Tokyo. For example, the 23 ward area is a part of the prefecture of Tokyo, which is also called the Tokyo Metropolis, which has led some analysts to think of it as the Tokyo metropolitan area (labor market area). In fact, the Tokyo metropolitan area, variously defined, includes, at a minimum the prefectures of Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba and Saitama with some municipalities in Gunma, Ibaraki and Tochigi. The metropolitan area contains nearly three times the population of the "Tokyo Metropolis."

Note 2: The expansion area (556 square miles or 1,440 square kilometers) has a current population of 250,000.

Note 3: Includes all residents in suburban districts with at least part of their population in the urban area.

Note 4: Urban area data not yet available.

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Road in city area.

The roads and ways of the city areas are very clumsy and many accidents are happening due to the short road. But you need to maintain the driving properly otherwise you may face accident. So now the government decided to expand the road which may put the positive effect on automobile sector. I think it is a helpful service for the society people. If you have a BMW car and you have faced any problem then better to repair it at BMW Repair Spring, TX for the best service.

Transit & transportation

Transit and transportation services are quite impressive in most of the urban cities; therefore people were getting better benefits from suitable transportation service. Urban cities like Moscow, Washington, New York and Tokyo; we have found high margin of transportation system that helps to build a better communication network in these cities. I hope through the help of modern transportation system we are able to bring revolutionary change in automobile industries; in this above article we have also found the same concepts to develop transportation system. Mercedes repair in Torrance

Moscow is bursting Noblesse

Moscow is bursting Noblesse at the seams. The core city covers more than 420 square miles (1,090 kilometers), and has a population of approximately 11.5 million people. With 27,300 residents per square mile (10,500 per square kilometer), Moscow is one percent more dense than the bleach anime watch city of New York, though Moscow covers 30 percent more land. The 23 ward area of Tokyo (see Note) is at least a third more dense, though Moscow's land area is at least half again as large as Tokyo. All three core areas rely

Belgravia Villas is a new

Belgravia Villas is a new and upcoming cluster housing located in the Ang Mo Kio area, nested right in the Ang Mo Kio landed area. It is within a short drive to Little India, Orchard and city area. With expected completion in mid 2016, it comprises of 118 units in total with 100 units of terrace and 18 units of Semi-D. belgravia villas

Russians seeing the light while Western elites are bickering?

What an extremely interesting analysis - well done, Wendell.

It is also extremely interesting that the Russian leadership is reasonably pragmatic about urban form, in contrast to the "planners" of the post-rational West.

An acquaintance recently sent me an article from "The New Yorker", re Moscow's traffic problems.

The article "abstract" is HERE (but access to the full article requires subscription)

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/02/100802fa_fact_gessen

One classic quote worth taking from it, is: "People will endure all manner of humiliation to keep driving".

I do find it odd that the "New Yorker" article author says nothing at all about the rail transit system Moscow had, on which everyone was obliged to travel, under Communism. It can't surely have vaporised into thin air?

Moscow is a classic illustration of just how outmoded rails are, and how important "automobility" is, when the auto supplants rails so rapidly than even when everybody did travel on rails up to a certain date, and the road network dates to that era, when nobody was allowed to own a car; an article written just 2 decades later does not even mention the rail transit system, other than to criticise the mayor for "failing to invest in a transit system".......!!!!!!!!

This is also a give-away of "The New Yorker's" inability to shake off the modern PC ideology on rails vs cars.

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Reimagining Design with Nature: ecological urbanism in Moscow

• Reflective Essay
• Published: 10 September 2019
• Volume 1 , pages 233–247, ( 2019 )

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The twenty-first century is the era when populations of cities will exceed rural communities for the first time in human history. The population growth of cities in many countries, including those in transition from planned to market economies, is putting considerable strain on ecological and natural resources. This paper examines four central issues: (a) the challenges and opportunities presented through working in jurisdictions where there are no official or established methods in place to guide regional, ecological and landscape planning and design; (b) the experience of the author’s practice—Gillespies LLP—in addressing these challenges using techniques and methods inspired by McHarg in Design with Nature in the Russian Federation in the first decade of the twenty-first century; (c) the augmentation of methods derived from Design with Nature in reference to innovations in technology since its publication and the contribution that the art of landscape painters can make to landscape analysis and interpretation; and (d) the application of this experience to the international competition and colloquium for the expansion of Moscow. The text concludes with a comment on how the application of this learning and methodological development to landscape and ecological planning and design was judged to be a central tenant of the winning design. Finally, a concluding section reflects on lessons learned and conclusions drawn.

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The landscape team from Gillespies Glasgow Studio (Steve Nelson, Graeme Pert, Joanne Walker, Rory Wilson and Chris Swan) led by the author and all our collaborators in the Capital Cities Planning Group.

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Evans, B.M. Reimagining Design with Nature: ecological urbanism in Moscow. Socio Ecol Pract Res 1 , 233–247 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42532-019-00031-5

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Accepted : 13 August 2019

Published : 10 September 2019

Issue Date : October 2019

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s42532-019-00031-5

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Guest Essay

There Is a Way Out of MAGA Domination

By Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner

Mr. Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Mr. Wehner is a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum.

A few weeks ago, Mike Pence did what no other vice president in the modern era has done: He refused to endorse the re-election of the president under whom he served. When it comes to alumni of Donald Trump’s administration, Mr. Pence is hardly alone; the list of high-ranking officials who worked for Mr. Trump and have implied or outright stated that they can’t support their former boss under any circumstances has grown to an astonishing length .

The list of prominent Republican figures who did not serve under Mr. Trump and who regard him as unacceptable is equally impressive. It includes the 2012 Republican nominee for president, Mitt Romney, and his running mate, the former speaker of the House Paul Ryan, as well as Liz Cheney, who served in the House Republican leadership, and her father, the former vice president Dick Cheney, who summarized the situation bluntly : “There has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.”

Despite Mr. Trump’s almost effortless sweep of the Republican nomination contest, there remain deep pockets of resistance to him in the ranks. More than a fifth of voters in the Republican primaries supported Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina; among many of them, there is intense opposition to Mr. Trump’s presidential run. And as The Washington Post points out , nearly one in five Republican primary voters across four contests on April 2 voted for an option other than Mr. Trump — even though he was the only Republican still campaigning at that point.

So two things are happening at once: The Republican Party is thoroughly MAGA and will be for the foreseeable future, and there is a small but influential number of Republicans who are deeply opposed to what their party has become but not prepared to shed their political identity and join the Democrats.

For this group, one viable course remains: create a Republican Party in exile, a counterestablishment dedicated to recapturing the party from the outside.

In world history, exiles, expatriates and their movements have played important roles in fighting unjust regimes. They bring detailed knowledge of their country and its politics to bear on efforts to change the government. They assemble agendas and personnel for its eventual replacement. They provide a rallying point and inspiration for regime opponents who otherwise might succumb to fatalism and fatigue. They connect and coordinate disparate exile factions.

Not least important, they show the world that they are committed to the fight and will not accept the legitimacy or inevitability of the current regime. To get a sense of the inspiration they can provide, think of Charles de Gaulle and Free France, the government in exile that was established in London after France fell during World War II.

There are, of course, profound differences between the task faced by de Gaulle in 1940 and the problem of reconquering the Republican Party today. But they share this position: Psychologically, an exile movement must recognize that it does not have a place in the system and must work from outside it.

That is a conceptual bridge that many anti-MAGA Republicans have been unready to cross. Yes, they have acknowledged the dominance of MAGA in the party. Yet they have hoped to act effectively as a faction within it.

Until now, Republicans who opposed Mr. Trump could point to state and local politics, where non-MAGA Republicans — and, much more rarely, anti-MAGA Republicans — have won elections, sustaining a Republican rump faction that holds MAGA at arm’s length. Non-MAGA Republicans believed that the party would feel stung by MAGA’s record of regularly losing elections that Republicans ought to have won, including the loss of the presidency by an incumbent, control of the Senate in the 2020 election cycle and the fizzle in the 2022 midterms, when voters in race after race surgically excised extreme MAGA candidates.

Non-MAGA Republicans expected that the multiple indictments of Mr. Trump would discredit him in the eyes of G.O.P. primary voters or at least lead them to abandon him as a likely loser. They imagined that Mr. Trump’s increasingly unhinged and self-absorbed behavior would alienate his supporters. They supposed that Mr. Trump might lose the nomination if forced into a one-on-one race with a single strong contender. And they thought, if all else failed, that the Republican base might simply grow bored with the stale, repetitive and witless Trump show.

Those suppositions turned out to be wrong, and Ms. Haley’s loss to Mr. Trump in the Republican primaries has extinguished all of them. Mr. Trump will be crowned in July. He commands cultlike loyalty among his MAGA base. He has taken over the machinery of the Republican Party. His election to the White House in November would further consolidate his control of the party, but even if he is defeated, MAGA will not believe it lost fairly and therefore will not willingly relinquish its grip.

Which brings us back to the non-MAGA faction. With its paths blocked inside the party, it can still bring formidable people, resources and ideas to the task of defeating MAGA from the outside, as an exiled party.

What would this mean in practice? A G.O.P. in exile — the Free Republicans, as it were — can be a loose network of organizations, think tanks, politicians, consultants, donors and activists; it can have a more formal structure, with its own national committee, state chairs and staff. It might hold conventions, develop chapters and auxiliaries and approve a platform, or it might rely on a more decentralized strategy that supports and coordinates assorted efforts to build a bench of anti-MAGA talent and ideas. Regardless of how those tactical choices are made, four strategic principles should define the project.

First, the Free G.O.P. should fully accept its exile status. No daydreaming about being welcomed back into the MAGA party any time soon. The project must look beyond the next month, the next year and the next election. It cannot be impatient or easily discouraged.

Second, even as the Free G.O.P. accepts its outsider status — even as it acknowledges MAGA’s control of the Republican Party — it should identify unwaveringly as the true Republican Party and reject the moral legitimacy of the Trump regime. The Free G.O.P. would insist that it, not MAGA, lays claim to the heritage of the party of Lincoln.

Third, the Free G.O.P. should develop an agenda — or, more realistically, a set of agendas — for a post-MAGA future. According to The Hill, Mr. Pence’s political advocacy group, Advancing American Freedom, “plans to invest $20 million this year to shape the conservative agenda, an effort to directly counter what Pence had previously described as populism ‘unmoored to conservative principles.’”

The former vice president is putting his name on the line to oppose the Trumpian populism that controls the Republican Party. He and his partners have the right idea: Free Republicans must develop ideas and conversations about what 21st-century conservatism should look like. Looking backward to a pre-Trump G.O.P. won’t succeed.

Fourth and most essential, Free Republicans must set their sights on overthrowing MAGA, not influencing it, partnering with it, bargaining with it, coexisting with it or waiting it out. They must name and explain what Trumpism represents: lawlessness, moral anarchy, conspiratorial thinking and an assault on the Constitution. They must challenge MAGA Republicans in primaries, focusing in particular on state races for governor, attorneys general, state legislators and others. They must be prepared to withstand the hostile machinations of the MAGA Republican Party and the attacks of the Trump movement, which will be relentless. If they do not consistently oppose MAGA, they will be dragged under it.

A party in exile would establish a gathering point for emerging leaders and fresh thinkers. It would be a clearinghouse for resources and strategies with which to assail the MAGA establishment. It would train candidates, build political networks, gather donors and supporters and show the public a brighter future.

And the Free Republican Party would keep the fires of conservatism burning. In its travels from Lincoln to Reagan and the Bushes, the Republican Party has metamorphosed many times, as adaptable parties must. But it has stayed true to certain conservative fundamentals: the rule of law, the value of institutions, the necessity of virtue and (as George Will has said) the belief that the vision of the founders is what American conservatism conserves. Free Republicans can rightly claim title to the party’s ideological crown jewels, which MAGA’s nihilistic flimflam has tossed in the dumpster.

Recent history is replete with examples of seemingly marginal political movements that moved with surprising speed to overthrow exhausted establishments, including Goldwater-Reagan conservatism in the 1960s, supply-side economics in the 1970s, the New Democrats in the 1980s and the Gingrich revolution in the 1990s. If anti-MAGA Republicans unite, they can experience similar success.

Even if MAGA’s grip on the party were irresistible, organizing in opposition would still be worth it, because some things are worth fighting for. But it is also true that the MAGA movement, built on lies and antagonistic to America’s founding principles, is unsustainable. Its unpopularity and indecency will generate openings for challenge and change. The job of the Republican Party in exile is to identify, create and exploit such openings — and above all, to be ready when they appear.

Jonathan Rauch ( @jon_rauch ) is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of “ The Constitution of Knowledge : A Defense of Truth.” Peter Wehner ( @Peter_Wehner ) is a contributing Opinion writer and a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum who served in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. He is the author of “ The Death of Politics : How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Squatters who took over Gordon Ramsay’s $16.1M London pub ‘served papers’ — while some choose to stay inside restaurant

It’s closing time in London.

Professional squatters who took over Gordon Ramsay’s London $16.1 million pub were forced out after they were “served papers,” while part of the resistance seemingly chose to stay behind inside the restaurant.

Members of the Camden Art Cafe, a self-described “autonomous cafe in the heart of Camden,” announced they received the papers on Tuesday which ordered them to leave the celebrity chef’s York & Albany gastropub.

“We are sad to announce Camden art collective have left the building after being served papers yesterday,” the group announced on Instagram. “We wish those left in the building the best of luck in their endeavors.”

“We hope to be a part of the community again soon.”

The group of 20-something squatters went by the pseudonym “Gordon” — referencing the iconic chef — in an attempt to protect their identity, according  to the Independent.

The group claimed to have occupied the British restaurant as a form of protest for the “victims of gentrification” and the country’s high-speed railway, H2S.

“We aim to open our doors regularly to anyone and everyone, particularly the people of Camden who have been victims of gentrification and parasitic projects like HS2,” the group said in an earlier post to social media.

“We provide free food, drinks, and a space to display their art without the ridiculous red-tape that galleries require people to jump over. We believe all of us and our art deserve dignity.”

HS2, England’s second high-speed rail project is planned to connect the village of Handsacre, in Staffordshire with London.

It is currently under construction, with completion set between 2029 and 2033.

The squatters were forced to cancel their cafe — allegedly set up to feed the homeless — after they were served the papers.

“Apologies to everyone who was going to come along today. Papers served cafe canceled!” the group said Tuesday morning.

The group says it chose Ramsay’s luxurious hotspot in Camden because of the wealth disparities in the London borough, wanting to open the $16 million restaurant for everyone to enjoy.

“The York and Albany is an iconic building in Camden since its opening in the 1820s; it has withstood wars and bombs, and despite what the media says, it will withstand the potentially short but hopefully long stay we squatters have here.

“At a time when Camden market has been bought out by a billionaire and many longstanding local businesses are being evicted from their units, it’s even more important that we all band together in all the forms of resistance that we know and can.”

The restaurant had been closed when the squatters took over as the “Hell’s Kitchen” host worked to sign over to new partners in a multi-million dollar deal.

“The pub was temporarily closed while he was finalizing a new lease, and during this handover period, a gang of professional squatters somehow bypassed all the security and CCTV, and got themselves in,” a source previously  told the US Sun.

The group had initially boarded themselves inside the building using appliances straight from the kitchen.

They also told the locals the restaurant was their home, according to the outlet.

The squatters had threatened legal action against anyone who tried to force them out, saying they were entitled to remain in the pub because it is a “non-residential building.”

A  2012 law made squatting  a criminal offense in England and Wales, as long as it took place inside a residential building, with the maximum penalty of six months imprisonment and/or a fine.

“Take notice that we occupy this property and at all times there is at least one person in occupation,” a legal notice posted outside the pub read.

“That if you attempt to enter by violence or by threatening violence we will prosecute you … You may receive a sentence of up to six months imprisonment and/or a fine of up to £5,000 ($6,200)”

The police have remained away from the issue as they call it “a civil matter” that had to be dealt with in the courts.

The “Masterchef” star was embroiled in an unsuccessful legal battle to free himself from the building’s lease in 2015, putting his family members at odds.

He was ordered to pay $797,000 in rent after his father-in-law Christopher Hutcherson allegedly used a “ghost writer” machine to sign Ramsay’s name on a legal document.

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Interwoven lives, Threads of hope

Ending inequalities in sexual and reproductive health and rights

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Bravo Shows Currently in Production and What Viewers Hope To See From Them

Bravo continues to dominate the reality TV landscape with its Real Housewives franchise, among others.

The Big Picture

• Get ready for juicy drama on Southern Charm as Olivia Flowers exits and new relationships unfold, shaking up the cast dynamics.
• The Real Housewives of New York City 's new season brings back fan-favorite newcomers and promises more exciting antics.
• The Real Housewives of Atlanta welcomes back Porsha Williams, while The Real Housewives of Orange County cast faces rifts and drama.

It's the start of summer, which means many different Bravo shows will start being produced to bring in great seasons for the fall. Viewers always look forward to this season because shows being filmed during the summer always seem to bring in more fun and drama, and the cast even seem more relaxed, since Summer is when everyone can relax and let loose. Southern Charm , The Real Housewives of New York City, The Real Housewives of Atlanta, and The Real Housewives of Orange County are four of the shows that have had the most changes since they ended that left viewers wanting more.

With Southern Charm, viewers want to see how the Charmers will handle not having Olivia Flowers in the cast and the aftermath of her drama with Taylor Green . The Real Housewives of New York City premiered with its new cast, and now that all the ladies have met, it is time for them to bring their A-game for their sophomore season. The Real Housewives of Atlanta has undergone significant changes after its last lackluster season by bringing back Porsha Williams and removing half of its cast. Th e Real Housewives of Orange County has made news the most after its previous season because of Shannon Storms Beador getting a DUI , breaking up with her ex-boyfriend John Jansenn , him dating Alexis Bellino , and Shannon ending her friendship with Tamra Judge . All of the juicy drama, new relationships, and cast turnover have fans excited about how the changes will play out on the shows during their respective seasons.

New Relationships Shake up 'Southern Charm'

After what felt like Southern Charm's best season, the Charmers are ready to keep their foot on the gas pedal for next season. Viewers are eager to see how the dynamics have changed in the group due to the conflict between Olivia Flowers and Taylor Green — not only to see how the cast feels about the conflict now, but also because it was announced that Olivia would not be coming back for the next season , which will create an open space for someone else to bring in the drama. Taylor is currently in a new relationship, as well as cast mate Austen Kroll who also has a new fling .

Not only are viewers eager to see how the new relationships fit in with the cast, but also Austen and his best friend Craig Conover are opening their bar called "On The Way," which is scheduled to open during the summer, and it will be great to see the process of how they get this bar open and what the concept will be. Besides the OGs making big moves, newbie JT Thomas will be in his sophomore season, and it will be interesting to see how his relationship with Austen fares since they went head-to-head last season.

Southern Charm

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A look at five families living in a protected Southern California enclave, and the real-life housewives who reside in one of the wealthiest planned communities in the country.

Southern Charm is available to stream on Peacock in the U.S.

Watch on Peacock

Round Two for the 'Real Housewives of New York' Newbies

The Real Housewives of New York City was a franchise that had everyone's eyes on it because it was a completely different cast from what everyone was used to, and no one knew how they would do . Luckily, this new cast was a hit with viewers, and it was recently announced that they would all be returning for Season 15 . Bravo trusts them all to return for a second season, and viewers are eager to see what new antics these ladies get into.

The season's breakout star was Jessel Taank, and viewers cannot wait to see what she brings to this new season with her husband, Pavit Randhawa . Not only are viewers excited to see Jessel, but Ubah Hassan recently made her relationship public , which will show another side of her. She was more private during the first season, yet was still one of the most dynamic members of the season . The relationship viewers probably wanted to learn more about was Jenna Lyons , but she mentioned she would not focus on her current relationship on the show. Still, seeing what she brings this season will be interesting because she will undoubtedly seem more comfortable in front of the cameras and show more of her personality.

The Real Housewives of New York City

A fast-paced reality show that follows several incredibly busy and ambitious Manhattan women. Watch as they balance envious social calendars, challenging careers, and motherhood, with the hustle and bustle of the big city all around.

The Real Housewives of New York City is available to stream on Peacock in the U.S.

'Below Deck Down Under' Is Bravo's Best Kept Secret

Porsha williams and kenya moore return for 'the real housewives of atlanta'.

Real Housewives of Atlanta has had a tough time getting viewers to enjoy the show, and its last two seasons have not been everyone's cup of tea. This upcoming season, though, is one viewers cannot wait to see because it marks the comeback of fan-favorite Porsha Williams and the first time the show will be on without OG cast member Kandi Burruss . Besides Kandi leaving the cast, Bravo also announced Marlo Hampton and Sanya Richard-Ross would not be coming back either. Viewers are very excited to have Porsha back bringing the fun energy she previously brought to RHOA, and it will be interesting to see her be on good terms with Kenya Moore . Still, who will join her in the new season hasn't been announced, but fans hope to see her and Kenya become the dynamic duo they should have always been. Porsha's return isn't an easy ride for her since she is currently undergoing a divorce , and it'll be great to see how she is handling this divorce compared to her first one now that she is more mature.

The Real Housewives of Atlanta

A reality television series focused on the personal and professional lives of several women residing in Atlanta, Georgia.

The Real Housewives of Atlanta is available to stream on Peacock in the U.S.

Shannon Beador's Extracurricular Created a Rift in the 'Real Housewives of OC' Cast

The show that made the most news post-filming and during production was The Real Housewives of Orange County, thanks to Shannon Storms Beador. After its last season, everything within the RHOC cast seemed reasonable, and everyone was finally seeing eye to eye. Still, after filming ended, Shannon Storms Beador got into a hit-and-run DUI , which ended up with her having to go through three years of probation. After this incident, everything seemed to go differently for the RHOC cast member. She and her boyfriend, John Jansenn, broke up during the time she was going through the DUI , and it wasn't until a couple of weeks later that he revealed his new relationship with RHOC alum Alexis Bellino. This created a rift between the cast, since most of them were already on good terms. The friendship that drifted the most because of Alexis was the one between Shannon and Tamra Judge; they have been best friends for many years, but they have publicly talked about each other, which has created a rift between them. Viewers cannot wait to see how it all goes down on camera and how different the relationship between the "Tres Amigas" will be.

The Real Housewives of Orange County

The Real Housewives of Orange County is available to stream on Peacock in the U.S.

Local News | Sadness, anger, hope as Catholics confront new…

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Local News | Sadness, anger, hope as Catholics confront new city alignment plan

When Pat Furman went to Mass at Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic Church Sunday, as she has done regularly for more than 43 years, she had every reason to feel good about attending.

She’d brought her four children up in the church in Locust Point in South Baltimore. She’d seen seven grandchildren grow up there and relished seeing two of them celebrating confirmations there soon.

Furman was also proud of Good Counsel’s communal spirit, recent attendance, and record of charitable outreach.

So she was stunned when the Rev. Kevin Ewing announced from the pulpit that the church would be closed or repurposed under a proposal by the Baltimore archdiocese to realign its operations in the city.

“You could hear people gasp,” Furman, 67, said of the scene in church, which was founded in 1855. “It was ‘No, no, no. … We’ve done everything the archdiocese has asked, we’re doing everything right, and you’re going to shut us down? The feeling is, ‘We’re the forgotten community down here.'”

Furman was not the only one experiencing strong emotions. It has been just over a day since the nation’s oldest diocese rolled out an official proposal it could use in its ongoing plan to remake the landscape of Catholic life in its biggest city.

The proposal church leaders shared at Masses over the weekend as part of “Seek the City to Come” — a multiyear initiative through which it hopes to adjust to sinking attendance, declining revenues and the burdens of an aging, expensive infrastructure — would slash the number of parishes in Baltimore and adjacent suburbs from 61 to 21. It would cut the number of worship sites from 59 to 26.

It would also, if approved, incorporate three new models for parish life — the “mosaic,” “radiating parish” and “Catholic commons” models — as part of a reset aimed at streamlining ministries and concentrating resources to serve a city in distress more efficiently.

“We set out many months ago with a call to the faithful: Help the church in Baltimore minister to our neighbors and respond to the needs of the city for the centuries to come as we have since 1789,” the leader of the archdiocese, Archbishop William E. Lori, said in a statement released Sunday. “Together, we must design a plan that confronts decades of disinvestment and population loss in the city and brings the Eucharistic vision to life through mission and ministry.”

The proposal is not a final plan. Catholic faithful will have the opportunity to comment on its contents, offer suggestions and share their feelings both online and at two in-person meetings in the coming weeks.

The first such meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. on April 25 at Archbishop Curley High School in Orchard Ridge in East Baltimore, the second at Mount Saint Joseph’s High School In Irvington, Southwest Baltimore, at 6:30 p.m. on April 30.

“Seek the City has evolved as a direct result of public feedback, and we continue to stand by our statement that no decisions have been made, that there are no preconceived notions,” said Geri Royale Byrd, the archdiocese’s director of community and external affairs and a co-director of the project.

Seek the City to Come — named for a verse in the Epistle to the Hebrews in the New Testament that reads, “for here we have no lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come” — is a multiphase initiative that began in 2022 with listening sessions, visits by diocesan leaders to churches, and “hands-on building from pastors, parish leaders, parishioners and community members,” in the words of one church document. Later phases incorporated demographic research, public meetings, and the work of up to 200 clergy members and lay Catholics to generate preliminary maps and models.

Team leaders worked up incipient plans at meetings in February and March, refined them based on public input, finalized their first proposal on Friday and had parish pastors present it over the weekend.

After further input from the public and archdiocesan leaders, it will be presented to Lori next month. He’ll sign off on a final plan in late May or June.

As open as Seek the City leaders have been with the process, they say, not everyone has been paying close attention — and even for those who have, seeing a formal proposal for the first time is bringing home the message that big changes are on the way.

“It becomes very different when you see it on paper in black and white,” said Regine LaForest-Sharif, a member of St. Francis Xavier Church in the Broadway East neighborhood in East Baltimore who has been sharing developments with fellow parishioners for months. “It has become real even for those of us who have been involved.‘”

Responses across the city came in many forms. Some whose parishes would be repurposed or closed said they weren’t sure they would attend the worship sites that would anchor the new, larger parishes, either because they were too attached to their current churches or because it would be inconvenient.

Furman said the plan’s call to center a new South Baltimore parish at nearby Holy Cross in Federal Hill — where it would absorb St. Mary, Star of the Sea in Riverside, Our Lady of Good Counsel and other nearby churches — meant hundreds of parishioners in a fast-growing part of the city would be forced to get themselves every Sunday to a church with very little parking.

That, she said, along with feelings of hurt at having to sacrifice their parish, had many in her congregation saying they would start going to a nearby Lutheran church — or not attend church at all.

“The archdiocese has slapped us in the face,” she said, her voice roiling with emotion. “It’s awful.”

She wasn’t alone in expressing anger. As parish council president of a pastorate formed among St. Francis Xavier Church, St. Ann’s Church in the Barclay neighborhood, and St. Wenceslaus Church in MIddle East — all predominantly Black churches in East Baltimore — LaForest-Sharif is familiar with the challenges involved in bringing independent parishes into a harmonized whole.

“Some of the meetings have been very heated,” she said, as even God-fearing, loyal parishioners have squabbled over how to organize events across parish lines.

Many were upset, confused or sad when they learned Sunday that St. Ann’s and St. Wenceslaus would be folded into a parish anchored by St. Francis — and possibly attached to another territory anchored by St. Ignatius Church in Mount Vernon — under the plan, in part because families have attended their chosen church for decades and expected younger relations to enjoy sacraments there, too.

“I think everybody is very antsy and anxious about what this is all going to look like,” LaForest-Sharif said. “But we’re trying to be patient and prayerful and remain focused on the bigger picture.”

One part of the city where the proposal landed hard was in Northeast Baltimore, where for several years the Rev. Patrick Carrion has been serving as pastor for five churches — St. Francis of Assisi in Mayfield, Shrine of the Little Flower in Bel Air-Edison, St. Anthony of Padua and Church of the Most Precious Blood in Parkside, and St. Dominic in Glenham-Belford — organized into a pastorate loosely known as “the Five.”

Earlier Seek the City models the priest had seen indicated that at least one of those churches would remain a worship site, he said, and that had been encouraging to his modestly sized but faithful flock.

Across five Masses on Saturday and Sunday, though, Carrion had to announce that all five would be folded into a new “Near Northeast” parish, one anchored by St. Matthew Church on Loch Raven Boulevard.

“It was very sad, very daunting, to have to say to parishioners, ‘All five of our parishes are proposed to be closed,'” he said. “After the first two on Saturday, I thought, ‘Okay, maybe I can do this.’ But it never became easy.”

Carrion wove the announcements into his homilies but decided it would be inappropriate to open the floor for questions. Instead, he led a meeting for parishioners Sunday afternoon. About 50 people showed, he said, and flashed a range of emotions and concerns. Some came to learn the fate of St. Francis of Assisi School, which serves preschool through 8th grade at that parish. They were happy to be reassured that no parochial schools will be closed as a part of Seek the City.

Some, he said, were skeptical that the archdiocese is really listening to feedback, and others that thought the entire motive was financial.

Carrion says he bristled at the suggestions but understood where they were coming from.

“I’m not surprised people are angry,” he said.  “You never think it’s going to be that day. And when that day happens, your reaction is still very emotional. It’s human nature.”

Sue Barcus can relate. A parishioner at St. Pius X in North Baltimore for 20 years, she had gotten the impression that the archdiocese would retain the church as a worship site, only to learn that the proposal would see it absorbed into a larger parish anchored by the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Homeland.

She said St. Pius X has a tight community and a range of hard-to-replace ministries, including a volunteer-run garden that contributes fruits and vegetables to a nonprofit that supplies affordable housing.

Barcus said concepts like “mosaic” parishes are hard to understand and that many who are used to walking to St. Pius X will have a hard choice to make.

“I’m going to have to get up earlier and drive to church, ” she said. “I probably will, but I can’t say that I’m too thrilled about it. I think there’s going to be a lot of frustration.”

The Rev. Richard Bozzelli said the parish he leads, St. Bernardine Church in Edmondson in West Baltimore, is to remain a worship site and parish anchor under the new plan, so there was a “sigh of relief” when he delivered the news.

That quickly morphed into concern for how it would affect the members of nearby parishes, he said, and his flock began discussing how to offer support.

That, he said, is the attitude church leaders pray most Catholics will adopt — to think beyond their own church and consider the greater good.

“They’re open to trying to figure out how to respect this time of grieving but also to reach out and help,” he said. “They want to be part of the solution.”

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