Maintaining a hopeful stance, as COVID19 increasingly permeates into every nook and cranny of our lives is difficult. COVID19 provides a fertile ground for fear and anxiety to grow exponentially. That is if we let it take over and run our lives.
Vaclav Havel (1990) taught me that hope is not about having to have things turn out but being okay with how things turn out. I learned this from his writings as I began making hope visible and accessible in my interactions.
Being okay with how things turn out requires that I make sense of how I need to be and what I need to know as I navigate forward ~ especially during the turbulent moments.
By attending to my storied experiences of making hope visible and accessible in my interactions, I’ve learned what to do when the hope suckers like COVID19 appear. Grade 8 students taught me about and coined the term hope suckers. For me, that means going for a walk, writing in my journal or blog, or going into my sewing room.
Each of these activities provides me with the solace to narratively reflect backward and forward and as Maxine Greene (1995) taught me to do, to see things as otherwise. The act of seeing things as otherwise, oftentimes, opens new doors or ways of seeing oneself moving forward, which in turn, require new ways of relating, feeling, acting, and thinking.
COVID19 is forcing us to see things as otherwise. Before COVID19, I did not see myself ever fulfilling my dream of being able to build an online professional learning community with educators around the world. COVID19 has helped me move what felt like a dream into a hope I could act on by starting with the creation of a website to house this blog.
How is COVID19 helping you to build hopeful ways of relating, feeling, acting, and thinking?
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