From Audacious Hope to Living Hope

As I watched the crowds gather and then listen and cheer as President Elect Obama spoke last night, I could help but think about how things not possible at one time sometimes become a reality. Wendy Edey, my mentor extraordinaire, taught me how things that are not possible at one time, do sometimes become possible. Wendy learned this in her conversations with clients in her hope-focused counselling practice at the Hope Foundation of Alberta. You can read about Wendy's work on her blog at www.thehopelady.blogspot.com.

Having read a good number of books on Obama, both his autobiographies and a biography done on him, I think about how he built his vision on a dream. He did so through tenacity and conversing with others, face to face, in a crowd or through his writing. He mobilized a country to say WE CAN make a difference.

But he did something more than that. Obama demonstrated through his thinking, relating, feeling, and acting that hope is about belief and expectation. He lives hope, audacious, imagined and real. Because his imaginations are "as if behaviours" (Sarbin, 1998), we are drawn toward his vision, believing and expecting that WE CAN work together to be the world a more equitable, peaceful and sustaining place for a greater number of people.

Barack Obama has taught us that if we embrace the multi-dimensional nature of hope great things are possible.

(for more information on "living hope" see Keen, J.A., 1995)