In the midst of winter, the temperatures in many parts of the country have plummeted. Gone are the mild '40s and freakish '60s of a few weeks ago. The nights are long, and spring is still far off. I am convinced that here in America, and perhaps elsewhere, we are finding it increasingly necessary, with each passing year, to distract ourselves from the cold and the dark.
For example, we seem to be making every effort to extend the holiday season. Here in Boston, the oldies station, which is the traditional voice of Christmas cheer, seems to be starting its run of classic jingles earlier and earlier each fall. It was once customary to dismantle one's holiday lights and garland on January 1st or 2nd. We are entering the second half of the month, and as I drive around town, I see door after door adorned with wreathes, lawns lit by slowly turning wire-mesh reindeer, and porches illuminated by rows of colored bulbs.
For many in America, the God of winter has become football; the HDTV has replaced the altar. Much of America, including many who know little about the actual game of football, are already busy planning a Super Bowl party. Last year, I flipped through the radio dial and found myself listening to a 20-minute conversation between two men comparing their "traditional" breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus for Super Bowl Sunday. This was a cooking show on a news talk station, not a sports radio show.
Could this growing fear of winter be reduced to Seasonal Affective Disorder? I doubt this is the reason. I also do not believe it can be attributed to the current economic recession or even the post-traumatic residues of September 11th. My sense is that the cause is deeper. I believe we are in the middle of a longstanding "hope shortage" that is more easily ignored in the longer, warmer days of spring and summer when the flourishes of nature can provide a focus and a pace of life that flips our awareness from the internal to the external. Life on the "inside" (psychically as well as physically) is hard for many people because it has become increasing difficult for men, women, and children to feel a true sense of empowerment, connection, opportunity, and transcendence. In contrast, hope is about purpose, engagement, degrees of freedom, and faith (religious or spiritual).
Moving from hopelessness to hope requires a transformation of mastery, attachment, survival and spiritual resources. In my book, Hope in the age of anxiety, I outlined a number of strategies for realizing these goals. One of the sparkplugs that I highlighted to effect a transformation of hope is inspiration. Inspiration can come from within or from the outside. Plato believed that inspiration was a piece of divinity that came bursting into the soul. Philosopher Ignacio Gotz called it "one of the most mysterious moments in anyone's life, the instant when things "click" and fall neatly in place, or a new idea flashes in the dark." He wrote:
"The mysterious instant goes by many names: inspiration, enlightenment, illumination, intuition, insight, vision, revelation, and discovery... Religious mystics speak of ecstasy and satori; poets, painters, musicians, dancers, and historians invoke their Muses; while scientists and mathematicians, parsimonious and prosaic, claim only hunches and intuitions."
With the need for inspiration in mind, and given that it is Martin Luther King Day, I thought it would be fitting to review some research on hope that I conducted on his famous "I have a dream speech". Anyone who has seen and heard this rhetorical masterpiece, psychologist or layperson, could tell you that it is moving, inspiring, uplifting.
Remarkably, nearly half a century has passed that Dr. King delivered his 17 minute call for civil rights. Many have rightly included it among the greatest speeches of the 20th century. When I was reviewing it recently I thought back to a brief exchange from the Lord of the Rings, where Sam exhorts Frodo not to lose his hope.
Sam: It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger...How could the end be happy? ...when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for.
Another speech that I am reminded of today was given by William Faulkner on receiving the 1950 Nobel Prize. I will paraphrase a few lines. Faulkner commented on the [leader's] cultural obligations to share the gift of hope and exhorted [others] to focus on "the old verities and truths of the heart." "Until he does so, he [speaks] not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope...His griefs grieve on no universal bones." According to Faulkner, it is the [leader's] "privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice..."
Now let me tell you about my research on Dr. King's speech. I did a two-part study. First, I had a group of upper-level psychology students watch the "I have a dream speech". I simultaneously asked them to rate the content of the speech in terms of attachment (defined as trust, unity, connectedness), mastery (defined as higher goals, empowerment, collaboration), survival (defined as coping, stress management, escape from danger), and spirituality (defined as transcendence, eternal truths, reference to a higher power). I asked to rate each of these hope dimensions on a scale of 1 to 5 (none (1), faint (2), noticeable (3), strong (4), very strong (5)). The average ratings for attachment, mastery, and spiritual content were all between 4.00 and 4.33. However, the survival rating was 2.67, statistically lower than each of the three other dimensions of hope. For this reason, I hypothesized that Dr. King's speech was an effective tool for inspiring three of the four dimensions of hope.
In phase two of my research, I turned to my pre-existing hope questionnaire, a measurement tool that I had developed several years earlier. The full questionnaire had four subscales, one each for attachment, mastery, survival, and spirituality. I removed the survival subscale, leaving a new, modified hope questionnaire that, in theory, paralleled the same dimensions of hope that seemed to be inspired by Dr. King's speech (attachment, mastery, and spirituality). I selected two large groups of students from another class of mine. One group (control) completed the new hope questionnaire before watching the speech while the second group (experimental) completed the hope questionnaire after watching the speech. As I guessed, the experimental group reported a significantly higher level of hope. From the typical scientist's perspective, one could report that this research validated my measure of hope. However, because I have accumulated a great deal of other data for my measure of hope, and established its validity, independent of Dr. King's speech, I can also state with confidence, that my measure validates the efficacy of Dr. King's speech as a true "hope booster".
