1. Give up hope: Thatâs right, get off the hope/despair roller coaster and realize once and for all itâs hopeless! So embrace hopelessness! Itâs OK! It makes sense. Read John Grayâs Straw Dogs. He, too, will tell you that itâs hopeless, that âWhen [the human species] is gone Earth will recover. Long after the last traces of the human animal have disappeared, many of the species it is bent on destroying will still be around, along with others that have yet to spring up. The Earth will forget mankind. The play of life will go on.â But that we can, should, must still be intentional, responsible, and joyful. 2. Explore your gifts and passions with someone you love: Get together with someone you love and tell each other what you really care about, what you have real passion for, and what you think really needs to be done in the world, that you think you could actually contribute to usefully, and would really enjoy doing. Then tell each other what you think each otherâs gifts to the world are, the things that other person is, in your view, uniquely good at doing. I bet youâll feel things starting to shift, in ways that are practical, and intentional, instead of just desperately, uselessly hopeful. 3. Be good to yourself: If youâve been reading the previous points, you should now appreciate that itâs perfectly understandable, even sensible, to feel hopeless. Weâre fucked, and you know it, but still youâre doing your part, taking responsibility, doing important work to mitigate or help adapt to the hopeless future we all face, right? So ease off. Itâs a marathon, not a sprint. Give yourself a break. Pamper yourself. Have a long hot bath by candlelight, with your favourite music playing. Go for a walk in the moonlight, or sleep under the stars. Play something, or just play around, by yourself or with those you love. Have chocolate by the fire. Celebrate the fact that youâre smart enough, informed enough, strong enough, sensitive enough, to feel utterly hopeless. You have to love that! 4. Cry (like an elephant): Research suggests that crying is a natural response to stress and grief, with enormous therapeutic value: âTears arenât just salt water; they contain leucine enkephalin, an endorphin that modulates pain, and hormones such as prolactin and adrenocorticotropic hormone, released at times of stress. Tears [might] be the bodyâs way of flushing out excess stress hormones⊠a safety valve.â Elephants, with exceptionally large brains and memories, visit the sites of pack-matesâ past deaths or suffering every day for years, to remember and to cry, according to research by Jeff Masson. Itâs natural, it feels good, and itâs good for you. So why does our culture not want us to cry when we feel hopeless? Hmmm. 5. Listen to kids talk about what they care about: Kids are hopeless. By that I mean that, until their parents, peers and the education system brainwash them to start planning and hoping for their future, and living inside their heads, they live in the present, without hope. By listening to them we can relearn what it means to live without the need to hope, to just accept and be. 6. Learn to be âpresentâ like wild creatures: Like young children, wild creatures donât live in hope. They too live in the real world, in the present. They have much to teach us about the First Principles of living, hopelessly: Be generous. Value your time. Live naturally. Learn to be present, your own way â meditation, exercise, walks in the woods â whatever works for you. Hope and hopelessness are both about the future. When you are present, neither has any hold on you. 7. Talk with other hopeless people: Weâre all part of the Earth organism, and itâs hopeless for all of us, so acknowledging that and starting to talk about it knowingly and honestly is the first step in making peace with our hopelessness, and with our collective grief. Perhaps itâs time to challenge the taboo in our culture that we must not admit to, or talk about, the hopelessness of our situation, and our feelings of hopelessness. You might start with someone you care about who you havenât talked with in a long time. Right now, yeah, leave a message if you have to, and persevere. When you do converse, forget about catching up on old news or talking about future plans. Talk about what youâre doing and feeling right now. Including the feelings of hopelessness. Bring them into your present and theyâll bring you into the present in return, and out of the âhopelessâ future. 8. Avoid unactionable news and âself-helpâ books: The media donât have a clue, and the ânewsâ is all about what has already happened, dumbed down, sensationalized and oversimplified to the point of meaninglessness. And skip the âgood newsâ pap and the technophilesâ gee-whiz âfutureâs so bright and green I gotta wear shadesâ new invention news, too. Itâs all designed to make you feel hopeful, so you donât rise up and do something dangerous or appropriate to the worst of the perpetrators who have, in fact, made everything hopeless. And while youâre dispensing with hopeless reading, throw out all those so-called âself-helpâ books with their glib prescriptions for you how you should live. There are gazillions of them out there, clogging the aisles of bookstores everywhere. Most of their readers will tell you (even as they buy more of them, stupidly, hopefully): They donât work! Things are the way they are for a reason. You are the way you are for a reason. Accept what is. Appreciate it. Make peace with it. Itâs all good. Itâs absurd to hope that some stupid book is going to change it. Donate your âself-helpâ money instead to those who truly embrace hopelessness, like the local homeless people, or your local food bank, or animal rescue centre, or radical activist group. And when youâre picking what to read, choose poetry and stories about the present, not nostalgic or traumatic stories about the past or cautionary tales about the future. 9. Dream: Dreams are alternate realities, and they are realities we can create and control. When you give vent to your imagination, it can manifest, âreal-izeâ wonderful inventions â works of art, with amazing healing, communicating, inspirational and transformative power. Your dreams are clues to your gift to the world. 10. Fall in love: I have no advice at all on how to do this. All I know is that it works. Itâs risky and addictive, for sure, and for most of us its most blissful effects wear off too fast. But nature has given us this wonderful state of foolish, invincible, chemical-induced grace, and it makes us immune to both hope and hopelessness.
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