Václav Havel said
[Hope] is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
One of the commonest things patients tell me is that our work together has given them hope. That’s always very heart-warming feedback, because without hope, it is difficult to live.
But reading Havel’s statement about hope not being “the conviction that something will turn out well” got me thinking. I suppose because I completely agree. I don’t think hope is about giving people the conviction that all will be well. How could anyone give that guarantee after all? The future remains unknowable….whether we are well, or whether we are sick.
But if hope is not about believing a disease will go away, what is it? Havel says it is the “certainty that something makes sense” and I think that is right. One of the values of integrative practice is that it is sense making. Taking a holistic, individualised approach to a person, listening empathically and non-judgementally, with full attention and acceptance, sets up the potential for understanding – for the practitioner to understand the patient, and, for the patient to understand themselves, their illness and its place in their life. Understanding is sense making.
I think hope is something else too, though. A lot of people who consult me feel stuck, trapped, suffering, or in despair…..they are scared that this is now how life is going to be. Hope emerges when it becomes clear that change is not just possible but probable. Havel uses the word “certainty” and as the future is unknowable in detail we can’t offer certainty about specific outcomes.
But change is one of life’s certainties. As every individual is actively involved in creating their own experience, hope emerges when we realise life can be different, and that our choices can influence how different it can be.
Heroes Not Zombies 
Meant to comment on this post earlier. I write about hope a lot in my journals because there are so many episodes of my life where I lose Hope, where I am stuck and see no possibility for a positive outcome or a way out of some dead-end I am in. Then I find my Hope again, by stumbling on some molecule of possibility or simply engaging in a positive action (weeding a garden), and life begins to move along once more, sometimes in a new direction. No, it is not the certainty of an outcome that brings Hope, it is just the POSSIBILITY that it is there.
Love the story of Pandora’s box.
By the way, I am one of the few people who have seen the end of a rainbow (at the side of an Arizona highway). Although there was no pot of gold, it was an amazing sight to see the colors just sink into the ground. That, in itself, was priceless.