NILS VON KALM reflects on the importance of hope, what he describes as “possibly the deepest of human needs”…
COVID-19. Another earthquake in Haiti. The Taliban resurgent in Afghanistan. To say the world is in a parlous state is an understatement of massive proportions. It’s enough to drive many people to despair. Now more than ever, the world needs hope.
Hope can be derived from circumstances small or large. The recent Olympic Games in Tokyo provided the world with much hope, as they generally always do, by bringing nations together in a spirit of sportsmanship. Despite it being about competition, these Olympics were also about cooperation. The world needed these Games. The sheer joy that many athletes showed at the performances of their competitors was a sight to truly behold. I was particularly moved at the scenes from the skateboarding. It wasn’t just that Australia’s Keegan Palmer won the gold medal; what grabbed me more was the genuine camaraderie the competitors showed for each other. The hugs and tears for each other triggered quite an emotional response in me.
The Olympic Games, says Nils von Kalm, was a source of hope for the world. Here, Jacob Kiplimo, of Uganda, right, leads the final of the men’s 5,000-meters at the 2020 Summer Olympics, on Friday, 6th August, in Tokyo, Japan. PICTURE: AP Photo/Charlie Riedel.
Hope transcends nations and it can transcend circumstances. It is possibly the deepest of human needs. Without hope, humanity is left without a purpose for living. For too many people, life is a meaningless existence with no ultimate purpose and no sense of genuine joy.
The last 18 months have seen a loss of hope for millions of people as the scourge of COVID-19 has taken hold all over the world. During one of the recent lockdowns in Melbourne earlier this year, I felt a sense of meaninglessness as the blandness of lockdown life hit me. When your regular routine is taken away and life is less controllable, we can lose ourselves in wondering what the point of it all is.
“Hope transcends nations and it can transcend circumstances. It is possibly the deepest of human needs. Without hope, humanity is left without a purpose for living. For too many people, life is a meaningless existence with no ultimate purpose and no sense of genuine joy.”
Mental health workers in many parts of the world have reported massive increases in clients presenting with symptoms of anxiety and depression. But even if it’s not that, the majority of us have been in an in-between state during the pandemic; not quite flourishing but not depressed either. In April, the New York Times published an article on what it called “languishing”. It described the experience as feeling somewhat joyless and aimless. The author of the article, Adam Grant, defined languishing as “the neglected middle child of mental health…the void between depression and flourishing – the absence of well-being. You don’t have symptoms of mental illness, but you’re not the picture of mental health either. You’re not functioning at full capacity.”
That has certainly been the case for me during much of the pandemic, probably moreso this year than last. Sometimes it lifts to a point where you don’t feel very bothered by another lockdown. At other times it can run deeper, where it feels like a sense of frustration at another lockdown or, as mentioned above, a sense of meaninglessness about life.
When our freedoms are removed, we respond in different ways. It is not surprising that the recurrent lockdowns have brought out not a small number of conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers. They were always there; it’s just that the pandemic has highlighted their thoughts and feelings more.
What does this have to do with hope? Adam Grant makes the point that languishing, as many of us have been experiencing it, doesn’t necessarily mean we feel hopeless, like you probably would if you were depressed.
Languishing still means though that you can experience a loss of meaning. The US organisation, Fight The New Drug, which helps people make informed decisions about the harms of pornography, has said that the rates of porn use during the pandemic have increased dramatically. The situation is similar with substance use. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports that, during 2020, the use of cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy and heroin all increased in Australian capital cities.
The old saying that nature abhors a vacuum still holds true. Jesus spoke about it in Matthew 12:43-45 when he spoke of the return of the unclean spirit. When we clean up our lives but don’t fill them with meaning, we are left open to our previous predicament returning and being worse than before.
When you speak to people recovering from addiction, they will invariably tell you that recovery is about finding connection, not just staying sober or clean from whatever they were addicted to. The UK researcher, Johann Hari, makes the point that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, but connection.
God has made the human heart for relationship, and as Augustine said so many centuries ago, we are restless until we find our home in God. Surrender to the One who is above us all and higher than anyone brings the ultimate hope that we as individuals need to thrive. Indeed, it gives us the abundant life that Jesus spoke of in John 10:10.
Addiction, depression and anxiety all stem from a loss of meaning, which in turn stems from a loss of ultimate hope. I believe it really is true that humanity’s best chance of emotionally thriving during the pandemic is to find life in Christ. That can manifest in a number of ways. Individually it can mean the daily attitude of surrender mentioned above, having the attitude that Jesus displayed in the Garden of Gethsemane: your will, not mine, be done.
Societally, it can mean having a sense of looking out for each other. This is where movements such as the ‘Kindness Pandemic’ have been so successful. Thousands of people around the world have realised that, when our way of life is ripped out from under us, what we are left with shows our state of spiritual wellbeing. The fact that thousands of people joined the ‘Kindness Pandemic’ shows that the image of God still remains in the human heart, despite the fact that most people don’t recognise it.
What sustains me during the pandemic is both the hope I gain when I am fully surrendered to God, plus the reminder of the ultimate hope that one day this pandemic really will be over. And not just this pandemic, but there will also be no more earthquakes which seemingly always impact the poor more than others, and there will be no more tyrants like the Taliban causing terror to millions of people who just want to live an ordinary life.
The great Christian hope is what I read in Revelation 21:1-5, that there is coming a day when there will be no more tears, no more pain and no more death. If all we hope for is contained in this current life, then that is no hope at all. It is ultimately futility. Hope must be real, and I believe it is. Now more than ever, the world needs this reminder.
Nils von Kalm is a Sight columnist.
