Is hope really a thing with feathers?
Building a practice of cultivating and nurturing hope for ourselves and others
Lakshmi Karunakaran
On 30th July this year, a series of landslides occurred in Punjirimattom, Mundakkai, Chooralmala, and Vellarimala villages in Wayanad, Kerala. At 2 am, a landslide struck near the origin of the Punnappuzha river between the villages of Punjirimattom and Mundakkai, sweeping away both villages. Within two hours, a second landslide struck near Chooralmala that diverted the Irunvanjippuzha river, causing flash floods that washed away the Chooralmala village. The collapse of the only bridge connecting the settlements left approximately 400 families stranded.
In the midst of this tragedy was the Government Vocational High School in Vellarimala. With about 500 students and 30 staff members, it was the only high school in a 14 km radius of the town. While all staff members survived, the school lost 20 children – the landslide left the school in ruins. A new stream of the river now flows through what used to be the office block of the school.
The principal of the school, Mr Unnikrishnan[1], has been working in the school since 2006. He lived in a small house with some of his colleagues, a few meters away from the school and a few hundred kilometers away from his own family. Due to a death in the family, he had left Vellarimala the previous day. That’s probably why he survived. Despite having had multiple opportunities to move away from such a remote school, he had refused to take these transfers. “I knew each of the children and their families personally. This school, the teachers and children have been my world for the last 18 years. We were all like a family,” he says as he fights his tears.
The staff had been involved in helping trace children in camps and in identifying them in mortuaries. Mr Adhil, one of the youngest teachers from the school adds, “Our heart has turned to stone. When rescuers found bodies of children of school-going age, they would call us to identify bodies. We felt helpless, numb.” Locals believe that the school was responsible to avert what could have been a bigger tragedy in the Vellarimala town. Its large structure and the old trees around it (many planted by older students) stopped large boulders from flowing down further.
Since the tragedy, the children and staff have been relocated to other schools around the area. The children didn’t want to be separated, neither did the staff. And that’s understandable; there is a dire need for them to grieve, heal, and more importantly, hope – collectively.
Hundreds of kilometres away in Manipur where two local communities are engaged in violence, many schools have been shut down – either because they were burnt down or are too risky to be kept open. Hundreds of children moved to relief camps and the government introduced the Schools on Wheels program.[2] Several teachers choose to visit these camps to continue lessons, even while facing significant obstacles. As I write this article, news comes in of another school, Blooming School in Jiribam, being burnt down by unidentified assailants.
In conflict zones around the world too, teachers rise to the occasion, many times risking their own lives. In Sudan, as civil war rages between two major rival factions of its military government, schools have remained closed for over a year, putting the dreams of millions of school-aged children on hold. Today, schools have partially opened in a few states to ensure that their education can continue. Salalab Eastern Basic and Primary school, for example, is buzzing with hundreds of children. The sudden increase in school enrollment due to mass displacements has led to overcrowded classrooms, where a class that once accommodated 50 pupils now hosts over 100. Yet, the number of teachers remains limited, with just 48 teachers and 20 volunteers – most of whom are displaced themselves – working tirelessly from early morning until late afternoon, demonstrating unmatched resilience and dedication to keeping children learning.
Since the Ukraine war began, about 3000 schools[3] have been damaged and more than 500 completely destroyed. Some retired educators have come back to teaching, driven by a desire to support students amidst the ongoing turmoil, sometimes holding classes even in bomb shelters.
According to the United Nations[4], since October 7, 93 percent of Gaza’s 560 schools have either been destroyed or damaged. About 340 have been directly bombarded by the Israeli army. They include government and private schools as well as those run by the UN itself.
These are just a few examples. Where does one find resilience and commitment in such dire circumstances? What drives all these teachers who risk much, sometimes even their own lives? Where and how did they find hope in the first place? How do they sustain hope?
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What is hope?
Do you think it’s a feeling? An emotion? Or a way of thinking?
Thejaswi Sivanand, an educator from Bengaluru, who has been working with children and teachers for over 15 years, says, “I feel hope is a sense of looking forward, a sense of positive energy propelling me to my future. While hope is a shared human experience, at the same time, it is pretty contextual to an individual.”
There is a robust science around hope. Over 2000 published articles tell us that hope is one of the single best predictors of wellbeing across the life span. The Hope Research Center at the University of Oklahoma defines it as not only a belief, but also the agency of an individual or community to actionize it. According to the centre, “Hope is a belief that your future will be better than today and you have the power to make it so.”
Dr. Chan Hellman, Executive Director of the Center says[5], “12 years ago I was fortunate enough to meet a young man who changed my life both personally and professionally. David was 19 years old and we had a 10 minute conversation that transformed my life. As I am having this very informal conversation with him, he informs me that 3 months earlier he received news of a devastating disease that he would live with for the rest of his life. More importantly, he had lived the last two weeks of his life homeless. As I was listening to David as a psychologist and researcher, I began to listen to those things that must be wrong – I tried to listen to words like anxiety, depression, and social isolation. Instead, David transitioned the conversation to begin speaking about his future – he told me that he was enrolling into the local community college. He had met with an academic counsellor, he had chosen his major, he knew what the courses were going to be. Instead of being focused on the adversity, he began telling me about his future goals and his plan to achieve it. And it just struck me that wellbeing is more than a reduction of what is wrong with us.”
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What is hope made up of?
Since the 20th century, psychologists have been analyzing how thought, emotion, and hope are related. Research[6] shows that hope is a way of thinking, it can be cultivated. The most significant voice in studying hope is of American psychologist C.R. Snyder, who developed what we now call “Hope Theory.”
According to the theory, hope has three important components:
- Goals – Goals form the cornerstone of hope.
- Pathways – Is our ability to identify routes towards the goals and to find new pathways (problem solve) around obstacles/challenges when necessary.
- Agency or willpower – Is our ability to sustain motivation to move along these pathways.
Hope is fundamentally different from, say a wish. When we wish, we have a desire for the outcome, but not really a plan to actionize it in the future – no pathways or the fuel (willpower) to sustain it. A wish remains passive towards the goal. So, on a cloudy day when you are waiting to step out and you say, “I hope it does not rain today”, it actually is a wish, because you have no control over the outcome. In a way, hope is accessible to most of us. While a goal to achieve something can come to us easily, it is the creation of pathways and agency/willpower that many struggle with, especially children.
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How can hope be cultivated?
Needless to say, the good news is that hope is a learned skill. It can be designed and cultivated.
Hope theory has two types of goal outcomes –
- Positive goal outcome (the presence of something) – can include reaching a goal for the first time, sustaining a present goal, or increasing something that has already begun.
- Negative goal outcome (the absence of something) – can include deterring something so that it never happens, or is delayed.
While planning pathways, it’s important to develop a Plan A, B, C, D, etc. Expect a roadblock and plan ahead. Build the flexibility to change the course of action when one plan fails and we need to take another route. This will help develop coping skills, build resilience, and help reach our goals under pressure. Take it one step at a time. Like they say, hope begets hope.
The agency or ability to stay with a goal can become one of the toughest challenges. Thejaswi says, “I feel there is a lot of burden on this word Hope – we think of hope with a capital H. As if it was always a grand pursuit. I feel a better way is to approach hope as something with a small h. Meaning set small goals that build upward. It helps you stay motivated and doesn’t overwhelm you.”
It is not always easy to sustain motivation or to stay hopeful. “When I am not feeling hopeful, I am engulfed by a feeling of dullness. And I feel like the equanimity of the day is lost. In those days, hope is not something that I experience at all. In fact, it feels quite alien to me. There is no motivation even to escape the situation. I realize on such days, tasks get me around, and slowly completing the tasks, in an organic way bring me out of such a situation. If the tasks are simple, I am able to get through, but if it involves crossing many barriers, I recognize it becomes difficult,” he adds.
Motivation or willpower is a limited resource – when it is depleted, we lose the capacity for self-regulation. It’s important to note that willpower is associated with glucose and energy levels in our system. This highlights the importance of nutrition among our children and in our communities and its critical nature to develop and restore hope.
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How can we nurture hope?
Dr Hellman says, “Imagination is one of the strongest tools for goal setting and keeping us motivated – to be able to visualize ourselves in the state of having achieved it, and what it could mean to us, our children, or our communities. The more we desire the outcome the more ready we are to overcome the adversities. Most of all, while working with children, it’s important to consider that it’s their goal, not ours for them.”
Consistent adversities, especially those that are beyond our control, and trauma, significantly affect the way and the nature of hope within us. Amandeep Sandhu, writer and journalist, says, “I studied in a very rough boarding school during the militancy years in Punjab. The society outside and the school inside the boundary walls were both cracking up. I feel to cultivate hope, during times like these is to define one’s philosophy for oneself and to be prepared to stand by your beliefs. I am inspired by a hymn in Gurbani: ‘if you wish to play the game of love, place your head on your palm and enter my street.’ My love is for justice, for equality, for humanity to prosper. When circumstances seem bleak, I ask myself if I still wish to play the game of love. Until now, the answer to that question has been yes.”
Adversities also influence the nature of goals we set – they become more short term, than long term. We tend to get into an avoidant mindset. The pathways thinking is stressed, especially among children. It influences our ability to overcome barriers and problem solve. Trauma seems to rob us of our problem solving capability. Our mental energy is driven by fear and rumination – draining us of willpower and motivation. Thejaswi stresses on the role educators can play for children during such times, “Something like hope is important to nurture in children, keep it alive for them – especially when the times are hopeless. Encourage them, let me know that you are there for them, in case they need a hand, or just accessible when they need to talk or think through a barrier, a challenge they are facing. Sometimes just being there to listen, to let them know that they are seen, they count, itself can help spark or sustain their motivation.”
Shivani Taneja, the founder of Muskaan, an organization that works with children from denotified tribes, a community facing systemic oppression for centuries, says, “I believe, despite systemic challenges, we have to hold on to the sanity in and around us. We as those who strive for equity and justice for ourselves and our children, need to just keep that relay going, adding our energy to our and the future generation. If we don’t have hope, what would we have? Hope has to be cultivated, held on to, believed in. We are actors at one point of time in human history. There were many people before and many will come after us. Each one of us will do our bit, it’s not all on me. I know I am part of a larger energy.”
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If there is one experience that binds hundreds of teachers who stand by and with their children in some of the most challenging and hostile conditions worldwide – it is the feeling of hope. They do what they do because of what Jane Goodall describes in her book Reasons for Hope – the amazing human intellect, the resilience of nature, the power and dedication of young people, and most of all the indomitable human spirit!
Note: Hope is contagious. It germinates and spreads as we cultivate and nurture it. In these times of wars and conflicts worldwide, Teacher Plus’ Hope Series will bring to you stories, books, activities, and much more that will encourage you to foster a culture of hope within and around you. This article is the first in the series.
[1]The Newsminute – Wayanad Landslide: A school that lost more than 20 of its students
[2]The Economic Times – Manipur Introduces Schools on wheels program to educate students in relief camps
[3]The Human Rights Watch – Ukraine War’s Toll on schools, children’s future
[4]Aljazeera – In Gaza education is resistance
[5]Tedx Talks: The Science and Power of Hope
[6]Hope Theory – Rainbows in the mind
The author is an educator and development professional based out of Bengaluru. She can be reached at lakshmikarunakaran@gmail.com.
