BRIGITTE author Till Raether grew up with the slogan “No Future”, and yet somehow it always continued. But where does one get the confidence in these times when the world seems to be exploding on all levels?
The poet Hilde Domin fled from the Nazis to Italy, England, and finally to Costa Rica, and it was only at the age of fifty, long after the war, that she published her first volume of poetry. When she wrote one of her best-known poems in 1992, she was in her eighties. The poem goes like this: “Don’t get tired / but hold out your hand / quietly / like a bird / to the miracle.”
It has been cited often, but not often enough. Especially in times when many people are in danger of running out of hope. Because the poem is not about patiently hoping for a miracle. But of it, that hope itself is the miracle. If it arises, if it stays, if you don’t give it up, against all reason.
Hope is irrational because hope cannot be made from facts. The facts actually always speak against hope. The facts are, for example, whether I want to hear them or not: The climate crisis will not go away on its own. Anti-Semitism is even more open, violent and present than it has been in recent decades. The wars are not getting any less.The political atrocities continue, spectacular and shocking, or insidious and disguised as compromises.
Can you turn away from the world?
Therefore, in the spirit of Hilde Domin’s poem, there is a time of great weariness of hope, especially for many people. A friend blurts out this mental exhaustion on the phone. We’re actually talking about something else, but then we come to our bad mood, our dejection and sadness in the face of the horrific news and images from Israel and Gaza, in view of the ongoing bombing attacks on Ukraine, on the Kurds, on our feeling of Powerlessness and helplessness. She says: “For years I have organized international contacts in my job, with Russia, Turkey, with China, with all sorts of countries, and now I have the feeling that none of this is of any use, nothing is changing, I don’t want to see any of this anymore. Now I’m just repressing it all and withdrawing into myself.”
Everything I can answer sounds hollow, because you can’t conjure up hope with phrases like “It just seems that way to you right now,” “Better times are coming,” “You’ve achieved more than you think.” . The hope then congeals into a cliché, not far from “When you think it’s no longer possible, a little light comes from somewhere.” Somewhere? But from where? And what do you do when you think it’s no longer possible? Are you allowed to hide away, turn away?
At home I witness a big discussion between the children, they are 19 and 16. The older one says that she doesn’t want to watch the news or read the newspaper anyway, because: “I can’t do anything about it anyway, all the terrible things that are happening. That just brings me down.” The younger child counters with arguments, saying that we should know what’s going on, to take responsibility and being able to change something.
How can I give hope when I hardly have any myself?
They look at me expectantly because I’m not necessarily wise, but at least old to them. “I think you’re right,” I said to the 16-year-old, “but,” to the 19-year-old, “I can understand you perfectly.” If I’m honest, the older they get, the harder it is for me to give them hope. They are not naive, they know the facts themselves: We are currently experiencing the hottest average temperatures in human history, the seas are warming more and faster than feared, there are fires and floods everywhere.
That’s why I sometimes don’t know whether and how much hope I actually have left. When they speculate about the future and ask me how we will live in twenty or thirty years, I answer them cautiously. I weigh my words as if I were on trial, evasive, as if I had something to hide. I then say that although I think things are getting more difficult, I’m sure we can manage it. That I can see how uncertain the future is, but that “back in my time” we also had a lot of reason to be skeptical about the future. The fact that I use the slogan “No Future!” grew up, but then, and at this point my confidence always fades a bit: But then everything somehow went well.
But is that it, gone well? Sure, when I was a teenager, we had very real, immediate fears of the possibility of nuclear war, and then of the nuclear disaster like Chernobyl. Accompanied by fear of acid rain, forest dieback, the hole in the ozone layer. In retrospect, it may actually seem to me and the people of my generation as if everything went well in the end and as if we had somehow managed it: there was no nuclear war, the forest did not die completely, and between Chernobyl and Fukushima, there was no major nuclear disaster for 25 years, at least.
What did I actually do back then? Not much
But since then, have I contributed in any way to resolving the problems I’m leaving to my children today? Sometimes I now see excerpts on social media from old “Tagesschau” editions from the early 1990s and the early 2000s, and then it’s about scientists warning about climate change and the UN appealing to finally do something. and that the situation is becoming more and more dramatic. Then I think: Ha! You’ve all known it for years! And the next moment I realize that I was in my early twenties or early thirties at the time, the ideal age to be loud and get involved, and what have I done? At best, separate my trash. So how am I supposed to give myself and the children hope when I share responsibility? And the friend who would like to withdraw from the world?
Maybe it helps to distinguish between two things. First, hope is a feeling, and second, one that can be influenced by actions. Positive and negative.
The topic of the “refugee crisis” brings together everything that scares me
One topic where I am repeatedly struck by hopelessness is the so-called “refugee crisis”, which some scientists also refer to as the “solidarity crisis”. This also better describes what scares me about it: the lack of solidarity, my helplessness in the face of the misery from which people are fleeing and in the face of the cruelty they face while fleeing and at Europe’s borders. And the cold that they are increasingly encountering in Germany. I cannot interpret the recent election results for the AfD in Hesse and Bavaria as anything other than a sign of this spreading cold.
For me, this topic brings together everything that threatens to take away my hope about the future: cruelty, coldness, a feeling of overwhelming helplessness and powerlessness. But I notice that it gives me strength when, in hopeless moments, I look at people who still have hope themselves. In my specific example, the refugees. Because, no matter how you judge it politically: In the end, it is hope that drives people to leave their country and take on incredible hardships and dangersonly to end up stuck in containers without work and usually without their families.
What about hope?
Nothing is more contagious than hopelessness, but I also realize how good it does me when I follow the hope of others as an example. If I don’t have any hope myself, I can support people who still have it. For example, by supporting the people in my circle of friends or in my neighborhood who are committed to helping refugees. I may feel like everything I do is in vain right now, but if friends feel otherwise, I want to try not to put them down. but to engage in their hope. By accompanying them when they go to a demonstration, I contribute to their hope and it becomes a little bit mine again. But it also gives me hope to listen to people who are able to express pain and comprehensive compassion. For the victims of Hamas terror in Israel and the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.
It’s also easy to make fun of people who are now joining a Democratic party. It would be so easy to tell them, what’s the point of that, and don’t you see how the SPD is also dominated by lobbyists, and how many terrible compromises your Greens have made, and what do you want to achieve in the FDP other than impoverish children and how can you support Friedrich Merz if you believe you can change the CDU from within? And sure, I’m left-wing too, but have you taken a closer look at the left’s attitude towards Putin? There is always something to complain about and find bad, and with the best reasons. But what is joining a democratic party if not an expression of hope? So I encourage my hopeful friends and maybe I can take something from them on the evenings when they go to the local club.
Giving myself hope by supporting the hope of others: This helps me in the phase of my hope-weariness to gain strength to continue to patiently hold out my hand to the miracle.
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To keep hoping and keep reading: Till Raether’s new book “Do I still have hope or do I have to create some?” (Rowohlt Polaris, 16 euros)