Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

cybicle t1_je2mm1p wrote

Just as the crises which Bollnow refers to can't be fabricated, hope isn't something which can be faked. Meanwhile, grace, by its very nature, results from behaving intentionally.

I think grace is a better frame of mind for people who are in a crisis to aim for.

13

[deleted] t1_je3gml2 wrote

Yeah, this is what came to my mind, too. "Grace" is a good word for that proactive adjacent to hope.

"Being hopeful" is definitely more passive than "being graceful". Having hope is like a prerequisite for taking the next steps (in grace).

Acting to change your current situation, in my opinion, implies someone has hope—hope that a more favorable circumstance could happen, if they dare to act.

Hope alone is definitely not enough to see it to fruition.

6

cybicle t1_je3nwpu wrote

Really, the important concept is that a person's triumphs over adversity is a valid way to measure their success.

What problems they faced, and the ways they overcame them, are all wrapped up together. There are too many variables to claim that a single quality is always the most important one.

2

Shakeandbake529 t1_je3tccn wrote

I think if hope in the way the psychologist Snyder defined hope, as either a state or trait quality of looking favorably toward future goals. It is more active and operational than the conventional optimism normally attributed to hope. Being hopeful in this sense can be measured in a person in or out of crises. In fact it can be a way of reducing feelings of despair even in the face of hardship. If someone has hope, they can believe things may get better even in current gloomy circumstances.

I think a very important link in the chain of hope is self-efficacy, defined by the psychologist Bandura. Someone can have a hopeful outlook that their future may improve, but self-efficacy is a sense of competence and confidence that you can take the steps to achieve your goals. It’s a sense of agency associated I think with levels of esteem and self-assuredness that are in the same family of concepts we associate with human thriving, and mechanisms for people to move forward through and out of crises.

2