Considering Hope: Real People Do it.

In keeping with the first Sunday of Advent, I have been mindful of the concept of "hope."   Hope is one of the themes of Advent.   I think that "hope" is rarely something contemplated or reflected upon the average person's life.

The meaning of the word.

I am not being original in this but according to Webster, hope is a feeling that something wanted is possible, and confidence.   Hope is looking forward to the future and does not look backward to the past. 

When Do We Hope?

It seems that we hope when we are not in a good spot.  We tend to hope when we are not feeling good, miserable, or are anxious.  Maybe something bad is predicted or expected to happen (such as a employer laying off workers or the "Fiscal Cliff") and we desire an exception to occur.  Maybe a loved one just died and a piece of us hopes that we are in the middle of a bad dream and we will wake up and the person will be there (this is part of the denial stage of grief).  

We tend to engage in hope when we are not in control.  We hope when an object, outcome or action is to happen sometime in the future.  We do not control what happens tomorrow . . . no one knows what happens until it happens. 

Sometimes we hope for something that we cannot get a clear timeframe on when something is to happen.  Many hope and wait for the love of our life to come.  Some of us hope for a job.  Some of us hope for the promotion we have worked so hard in our current employer.  

Sometimes we hope for the impossible against our better judgment.  This usually includes hoping for acceptance from your critical parent.  Maybe it is hoping that Aunt Phyllis will at least smile and be nice at the holiday and not find someway to make a scene at your holiday gathering. 

When Do We Give Up Hope?

People give up when they are depressed or when they feel that they have been hoping for the wrong thing.   It can be bad and then again it can be good.

When someone is depressed, they feel stuck and possibly suicidal . . . and give up hope.  Only when they start to feel hope do they recover.   I have had many depressed patients who had given up hope and feel that they were up against a big black wall.  By accident, years ago I told one patient that I offered them a message of hope and that they could get better.   When that patient was being discharged from my program, they said that my offering of hope helped them begin to recover.  (You bet I started making that statement a habit.)

On the other hand, sometimes we discover that we are hoping for the wrong things.  We find that we are waiting for something that is not going to happen.  We then surrender to the reality that it is not going to happen.  We grieve and make a choice to move on.  (I wonder how many people have gone to Hollywood and then went crawling back to their hometown in humility that their dreams were dashed?)

In reality, many people still keep some of their unrealistic hopes in corners of their minds.  Many hope that the estranged family member will return and apologize.  Many hope that they can become a celebrity.  Many hope that their lottery numbers win.  I think that it is part of human nature. 

The Spiritual Hope of Christmas

While I have not particularly sought to proselytize, I will say that if you are looking for hope in Christmas, then you probably need to examine the situation you find yourself in.

Christmas is a celebration that is more theological at its core than anything and part of the theology of Christmas is the spiritual hope for the world.  In making a general, theological statement, the world is a fallen place where bad things happen, and Christ is the redeemer to save it.  Jesus Christ is the hope of the world.

Sometimes we become mindful of how bad we are as people. We think about all of our bad points and how evil and rotten we can be . . . and have been.   That is when we can be open to looking for hope in deliverance.  The Bible tells us in a number of places within its pages that God loved us first in sending Jesus to earth to be that deliverer, and in him we can have hope and can be made renewed and clean. 

It is challenging to look at spiritual matters.  Life in the 21st century does not lend itself to spiritual reflection.  We are very busy people in the western world who tend to be driven to produce and be busy and not think about the spiritual.  We become numb to most matters of hope, and we only end up hoping when our expectations crash.   It is usually when our expectations crash, and when logic fails that we are open to the spiritual and the miraculous.  We hunger for something that knowledge just cannot fill, and that is the spiritual part of us.

Hope.  Real people do it.

Victim of yourself

In a countdown sense, Christmas is in five days and Hanukkah starts tomorrow.   In my blog so far I have talked about grief and loss and surviving toxic families. However, I have also talked about personal responsibility, which I come back to tonight.

If it appears that you are merely going to survive a lonely Christmas or  Hanukkah, do you have a plan?   If you are seeing that you are not going to have anywhere to go and you will be alone, then I have to note that the victim role gets old and loses traction after a short period of time.

While I know that many people are lonely and that more people have less money due to the economy, I know that there are options.  There is something that we can do for 24-72 hours to occupy our time and get past the holiday. However, many people will stay in the victim role and be miserable.

The Victim Role

The victim role is a role where the person is attacked or hurt or is manipulated.  The victim role is a valid role as we will all be victims of something in this life.  Everyone will play the fool.  Everyone will get taken advantage of when you get into some (but not all) situations where you are vulnerable.

However, people hopefully learn from the victim role.  In fact, we are inherently expected to learn from the times we have been victims.  Being victimized again and again shows that someone is missing something.

I have had many patients and clients love to play the chronic victim.  I have heard people go on and on as to how they got screwed over and how others just take advantage of them. I have heard a number of people state that they feel that they must be the victim because they had to take care of the loved one or friend. After a while, I got the idea that this "victim" was just making poor choices over and over again--they had power as to whether they were going to continue to be a victim.

The rewards of victim hood. 

I have seen over the years that many people love to play the victim because they get something out of it. They get sympathy and they in turn are able to manipulate others to get something else.  The victim role can also be played as a control position, especially in family and office drama situations.

Self-righteous anger also is a product of victimhood.  Many victims get some kind of feeling of power and a strange sense of superiority that they are better than the perpetrator.  Self-righteousness may buy you some attention from caretakers.

Victimhood has diminishing returns

In my experience, victimhood only gets you so much in the way of reward and begins to have diminishing returns.  Victimhood is often an existential matter--you may be feel you are victimized and the alleged perpetrator may feel they did nothing wrong, nor may they be aware that you felt wronged.  I have had people 'confront' me with some of the most stupid and crazy things they claimed I had done--but I was pretty sure I did nothing wrong.

However, victimhood is like eating the saccharin-based sweetener in the pink packets in many restaurants. The power comes with a price of feeling miserable and having a terrible taste in your mouth.

Personally, I have felt like the victim of other employers, professionals and shady administrators, roommates, and other peers who did not feel that that did anything wrong, but who told me that I needed to be welcomed to the real world.  Some of them seemed to be acting in their own self-righteous distortion.  There have been some strange dramas, but over time I figured that I had to move on in one way or another because I just couldn't waste my energy.

When it comes to Christmas, I hold that continuing to play the victim especially at Christmas is not going to make your Christmas any better--only more miserable.  Yes, maybe some of your family could apologize, make amends, do more, or could have invited you to come, but  I think that dwelling on being the victim is not using your energy to make Christmas a pleasant experience.  You will become a victim of yourself.

Can you get out of the victim mode? 

Some people have learned to play the victim too well.  They know how to play the victim. They have begun to think in terms of being the victim in many aspects of their lives. They go into situations automatically assuming the poor helpless, victim role.  They have become good scouts of situations where they can play the victim, but those situations dwindle over time and they become recluses because they have worn out their welcome.

If you are going to be alone and Christmas is going to be substandard or poor, you have choices. You can think like a victim or think about how you can spend it well.  Maybe you can find some last minute gathering, or get some people together.  Maybe you can get a book from the library, or maybe you can create some personal projects for Christmas.

There are no easy answers and there are no freebies.  It is up to each of us as to how we will make the best of the holidays. Dwelling on thoughts of victimhood is not going to make any of us warm.  What is your plan?