Against Hope

let us plant our faith instead in the darkness

[illustration from Harold and the Purple Crayon]

I’ve got a big imagination. I’m a dreamer, a day dreamer, a storyteller, a woolgatherer and a worrywart. I like big fat books about history. The plague years. The war years. Paleoanthropology. I like epic novels with ten thousand characters, each with a back story. I like to write my own stories about what might have been, what could have been, what might still be.

I did a wonderful dream workshop this past summer (with the extraordinary Robert Moss) and at one point we dreamt our way to a point of crossroads. Many paths diverged at this point in different directions. As a drum beat a rhythm into our hearts, we followed some of these paths in our mind’s eye. Where did they go? Where might they go? Where did we want them to go? What did seeing all of these possibilities mean for where we might put our next steps?

Is it wrong to imagine worst case scenarios, paths that might take us over a cliff or through a swamp? Are we manifesting bad outcomes by imagining bad outcomes—or are we allowing all of the possible ways forward to guide where our feet go next?

So many people hope climate change just won’t be so bad. Or hope that it won’t be so bad in their lifetime. But what if it’s worse than the forecasters predict (apparently it is) and what if we will be reborn into the world we have made (we will.)

Hope is a kind of eyes shut tight response to the future. “And all shall be well, and all shall be well and all shall be well,” note some folks quoting Julian of Norwhich, a woman who had seen plague decimate her community and war ravage the land. I often want to emend her famous quote to “And all shall be well (eventually, in the great expanse of deep time), and all shall be well (even if we die now because we will be reborn) and all shall be well (because life includes not just death but rebirth.” Her mystic words are wise but they don’t necessarily prepare us for the demands and exigencies of our present realities.

My primary problem with hope is that it limits us to imagining only one possible scenario or unfolding, the one we are “hoping” for. Hope focuses our eyes, and the prodigious powers of our imaginations, on a singular outcome that we think might make us feel better. I hope nothing bad happens. I hope the good guys win. I shut my eyes and I hope it all works out.

Right now I think we need to put hope in a basket in the back of the closet and start opening our eyes and using our imaginations.

We need to imagine the worst. The very worst. What are all of the ways the current situation in America could go wrong?

Someone said to me recently “Trump won’t be able to deport that many people” as if that was a hopeful reassurance. My response was to say, “Imagine what he will do instead. Look to history and see what he might do. Read some dystopic fantasy novels and think about what he might do.” How is Trump possibly going to deport all of these people? Don’t hope he won’t or hope he can’t. We need to imagine what he will do instead. Because these people are capable of imagining ripping children from their parents and putting them in cages. We need to imagine the worst because they are already planning for it, I assure you.

I know a lot of women rewatching The Handmaid’s Tale and imagining the worst. Preparing for the worst.

We need to imagine all the different scenarios that might unfold in our country and our communities and we need to imagine a thousand different ways to protect the vulnerable. We are going to have to cultivate bigger, wilder imaginations than the monsters. What if?

There are those on the front lines of helping others who are already doing this…but we are going to need a collective imagination to meet this moment that is miraculous and magical. Because not only do we need to imagine the worst that might happen, we need to imagine the unexpected avenues and paths, the trapdoors into other scenarios, the sneaky solutions, the sleights of hand that upend the story, the stories that startle us, surprise us, and make us shout with delight at how everything ultimately works out.

We need the day dreamers, the tricksters, the artists, the rascals, the wonderers, the psychics, the visionaries, the singers, the storytellers, and those that can conjure gold from straw and straw from shit. We need the dandelions to show us how to plant our seeds in concrete and turn a wasteland into a field of flowers.

Hopium is a drug that dulls our imaginations. And we need imagination right now. Big imaginations that are a step ahead, at least, of the monsters. Because there are monsters in our midst right now about to be unleashed. We need to imagine the worst things they might do…and imagine the ten thousand unexpected responses and maneuvers and scenarios with which we can respond.

What are you watching and reading and thinking about right now to cultivate your imaginative powers? I just finished The Light Pirate that imagines how hurricanes might affect daily life in Florida over a period of decades. Wowza. I am thinking about heading back to rewatch The Village, a French TV series about how ordinary people function and behave during the Occupation. And tonight I’m finally going to watch The Zone of Interest about people who chose not to see, to hope for the best, and to silence their imaginations, even when they could smell the smoke from the camps.

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This has been my Free Substack newsletter. I also have a Paid substack that includes excerpts from books I’m working on right now—and a monthly conversation about our experiences with the dead. The next Monthly Magic conversation is this Sunday, 11/17 at 3 pm est.

Perdita Finn is the author of Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World and the forthcoming Mothers of Magic: Recovering the Love at the Heart of the World. With her husband Clark Strand she is the founder of the feral fellowship The Way of the Rose, and the co-author with him of the book of the same name.