Hope or Hopium?

What will keep us going in the face of disaster?

A cartoon

A thought

I’m sending my love and solidarity to LA - far out eh? Aussies know a thing or two about bushfires. It is scary and scarier when this will likely be the coolest year of the rest of our lives.

I made myself sick last week by doom-scrolling breaking footage from LA. I clenched my jaw so hard overnight, I woke up with a cracker of a headache that has taken days to dissipate. Turns out, watching others’ trauma reignites your own - of course it bloody does - I can be a bit slow.

My family’s (mostly small t) fire experiences do set off a collective anxiety for us. My eldest was born under a column of smoke that looked like an atomic explosion. The sky was blood orange and raining blackened gum leaves the week Canberra burned in 2003. The fire, which hit the suburban boundaries of Canberra, destroyed 510 homes and was the first confirmed occurrence of a fire tornado - where fire conditions create their own weather patterns, including tornados, 70% of the territory burned.

At least my daughter had the presence of mind to be born a few days before the worst day, a friend of hers at school was born on the worst day, her father on the roof of the hospital with a garden hose while his daughter was being born inside - no birth plan includes that contingency!

I’ve helped evacuate horses from burning paddocks, had to call an ambulance for a person injured by a panicked horse and doused a fire in our front paddocks.

That was all before 2019 and 2020 - Australia’s Black Summer. We had a nearly continuous 12 months of fires up and down the coast, 34 lives were lost, nearly 10,000 structures burned down and an estimated 3 billion wild lives lost. Our fire-boxes (what we call go-bags) were packed in the back of the car for months. We breathed hazardous toxic air for 42 days, my asthma acted up. I actually spent some nights wearing a half-face respirator in order to breathe. We were glued to the fire authority app hourly, dreading a new outbreak close to us. We spent New Year's Eve 2019 on tenterhooks as said daughter, born in fire, was racing to leave a South Coast beach party barely ahead of a fire that trapped people on the beach for days. A few weeks later, new fires headed towards Canberra again in the same areas as 2003, thankfully, they were finally extinguished after burning only 40% of the territory this time, saving the urban fringe. Top that all off with the fact that my partner watched her house burn to the ground as a child and we are primed for anxiety.

So what have I learnt? I can bear witness to disasters that are outside my personal experience with more capacity. In future, I shall not consume news of wildfires unless they are of direct personal relevance to me. The NSW Hazards Near Me app works well, as does ABC local radio. I am also aware that the trauma response I can feel rise will also rise in future fire situations, I am holding that awareness with kindness towards myself, knowing that it might impact how I respond.

I know many Australians have similar and worse tales than me - I am sending you a hug if this last week has been extra hard for you too.

The truth is that our reality has changed in unequivocal ways. So now what do we do?

We knuckle down and build hope.

Some in the climate/collapse space dismiss hope as a dangerous delusion - hopium. That does not work for me. I want and need real hope.

Hope is a way of thinking, not a passive feeling or emotion. Hoping is not the same as wishing, even though we often use the words interchangeably.

I like Chan Hellman’s definition: “Hope is a belief that the future will be better than today, and you have the power to make it so.” His framework of how hope works is below:

Goals, pathways and agency have to work together for you to have hope. Consequently, my hope is embedded at a very personal level, where I do have agency. Anything beyond my agency is a recipe for anxiety.

I can’t simply hope that I will never have to deal with another bushfire - that is unlikely, and I have no pathway or agency to make that a reality. If that is what I am hoping, then that is hopium - a passive form of denial masquerading as optimism - “it will all be ok”. Hopium disengages from the problem, allowing it to fester while we wait for someone else to fix it. We have been so thoroughly trained as consumers that the idea of personally taking the reigns and taking responsibility can come as a shock.

If my goal is to be better prepared when the inevitable fire races over the hill in front of our house, then I have hope. That sort of hope isn’t naïve; it’s practical, resilient, and rooted in agency and community. Real hope acknowledges the scale of the problem without surrendering to despair. Choosing hope means choosing action and rolling up our sleeves to improve our small part of the world.

In Hellman’s words, “hope begets hope” and “hope is a social gift that happens in relationship with each other”, for real hope inspires others to take action too.

Glimmers and sparks*

My glimmers for today are:

• Aside from the destruction in LA, my doom scrolling was also filled with helpers, care, bravery and community.

• Time to read fiction - I am transfixed by Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray by the wonderful

  Anita Heiss
  - in my ears this week. It is super to read historical fiction centering Indigenous Australians, set in places close to where I live - 1850’s Gundagai and Wagga Wagga. I am eye-reading Juice by Tim Winton with slightly less enthusiasm. It is a post-apocalyptic world roughly 200 years in the future. I appreciate the timeframe and message he is sending but I’m not in love with the characters.

• Overnight rain - lovely to wake up to everything damp, it has been getting a bit dry!

Li’l bean is your reminder to pause and ask: What are your glimmers for today?

From your friend and your small, steadfast companion,

*Drawing Li’l Bean helped me navigate out of a period of depression in 2023. A good friend 13, 595km away, helped, too, through a ritual of swapping daily glimmers via text.

A glimmer is a tiny spark of hope, enthusiasm or joy that lifts your heart. By helping me find three glimmers each day, she gently helped me see the joy and beauty already around me.

I’d like to share this practice with you and invite you to reflect on your glimmers for the day when you read this. Think of Li’l Bean as a reminder to notice the glimmers and sparks in your life. We’d love it if you would like to share your glimmers in the comments or by hitting reply (if you don’t like sharing publicly).