Cycle through the various social media channels available on the first of January and it won't be long before you encounter a deluge of negativity. This year will be even worse than the last many will say. Trump, the climate, Brexit, Facebook scandals and computer algorithms that steal jobs, austerity, loneliness, war and addiction - it's true, there's a lot to be pessimistic about.
What follows from pessimism, however, is despair. Despair is a curious kind of comfort blanket that human beings create for themselves, it allows us to conclude that there is no hope, that nothing can change and that there is no future, and it allows us to stop trying. People ultimately give up striving for a better world for themselves and for others because accepting defeat offers some manner of short term relief.
The problem with despair and defeat, however, is that they are both too easy, even though they appear to individuals to be convincing maps of reality. They bring about powerful beliefs (or more accurately delusions) that 'nothing ever changes in life' or 'nothing will work' or 'this is they way things have always been.' To those who despair over climate change the belief that 'we're all done for anyway' is a constant refrain. To the addict who can't see a way out of their illness, countless negative ideas and beliefs rule supreme. It's important to note, however, that a belief and the truth are not the same thing and most beliefs attempt to predict the future, which is something that none of us can do beyond educated guesswork.
Hope is harder to do, and the fact that it is should tell us all something important. Hope is not a comfort blanket because hope tells us not that things are guaranteed to work out, that society is guaranteed to become fairer and more civilised or that an addiction can be easily overcome; hope challenges us to take action, in the knowledge that if we plan, prepare and then stick to our endeavors, then the chances of meaningful change occurring dramatically increase. Hope tells us that in the beginning, when we start on our journey we might be alone or misunderstood, but that this is not a cue for us to give up. Instead, it's an instruction for us to press on and to gradually inspire others with our example.
That's hard. It's hard because of the negativity that human beings seem to have wired into them, negativity which encourages us to give up time and time again. It's hard because we have to suspend disbelief and trust that things will work out, all the time rejecting the lazy cynic within us that on closer examination, has very little to say.
Instead of seeing the coming year as an arena of negativity and fear, see it as a place of action. If you're worried about climate change or the country's future after March, then these are calls to action, not your cue to crawl back under the duvet. If you're wondering what you as a lone individual can do, the obvious answer to that is 'a little bit, but not much.' This is why mass movements for social change exist, so millions of people together can change the world.
If you're still struggling with addiction, the waves of negativity that go with it should be your call to action. The future is not written and there is no more inevitability to your addiction than there is to anything else in the world. You can find solutions to your illness because a) millions of other addicts have and continue to get well ( and you're not that special and different) and b) where there is the will to get well, the addict is unstoppable, you just have to want it. No addict can get well on their own, and that's why a mass recovery movement exists.
Make 2019 your year of hard work, of effort, of commitment, of living to a higher truth and purpose. Make it your year of recovery from whatever you're recovering from and vow not to give in to the easy, lazy delusion of despair. It's a con trick and collectively and individually, we can't afford to fall for it.
