Practices of hope: beginning never ends

Abstract

Researching practices of hope is a practice of hope. I conceptualise hope as a central life force, uncertain as life itself because the outcome is always unknown. I argue that Hope needs to be intertwined with action to become a practice of doable hope. Doable hope is crucial in resisting hopelessness and false hope. Hopelessness and false hope lead to passivity and depression. Practices and hope are interconnected in a circular process, hope generates action and hopeful action increases hope, which in turn drives more action. Practices of hope are affirmative actions and can deal with the eco-social-economic-cultural-health and political crises that mark our nowadays life all over the world. Hope is always relational because it is directed to some future in the world. I argue that the multiple crises we are in are related to breaking the connections and interdependency in our world through capitalism, colonialism, individualism, sexism and anthropocentrism. We have to search for ways to bring back together what has been broken and to stop creating categories and hierarchies. Indigenous knowledge can help us here. In indigenous knowledge the starting point is the interdependency of living and non-living material and that we are part of this whole and have to care for this in order to live and survive. In COVID times I wondered what helps people not to lose hope. I started to have very short conversations with many people in different situations and from different backgrounds. The big collections of responses made me critically think of our profession, systemic therapy, and the dominant role of language, narratives, dialogues and words. When asked what helps people in difficult days people often speak of actions, things they do, movements, walking in nature, being involved in projects, making music and listening to music. Shift your senses and not being there so much seems to be helpful. Of course language, and ‘inner- action’, play a role but not as much as psychology and our profession suggests. I call the method I used, wandering and wondering around and having these short conversations, my nomadic inquiry.

Searching for a form for practices of hope, a structure, I got interested in Manifestos. Manifestos are plans of action that resist unjust situations, they have a dream for a better future and a plan of action towards that preferred future. Manifestos are hope in practice. I call manifestos that work for a more just life for living and non-living creatures ‘eco-manifestos’. I developed a five-point eco- manifesto as a research instrument and as an intervention. I worked with teams and individuals and co-created their own eco-manifesto and reflected together with the involved colleagues on the outcomes. The effect cannot be predicted and not be controlled. I give examples of co-created eco- manifestos and the accompanying co-reflections.

My preliminary conclusions are that we need to expand our systemic practices with much more action-oriented material and interventions. We can only do so if we expand ourselves, filling our rooms with material, music instruments and digital music services, play, theatrical and dance props, art. And we can experiment with going outside the room, walking in the city or nature, going to and with people, doing something. As professionals that are aware of the influence of context, we need to find ways to involve the environment in our practices. We need a relational theory of body-mind-environment.