Understanding Hope

Haven’t you always thought of hope as a feeling, a glorious response that rises from deep within? As something that you either have or don’t in a given situation. I had thought so too, and turns out it is another thing about which I was wrong. Research has shown that, shockingly, hope is not an emotion at all. Instead, it’s a cognitive process, a way of thinking.    

C.R. Snyder, a former researcher at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, tells us that hope is a thought process that is made up of a trilogy of:

• Goals
• Pathways
• Agency

What this means is that we are hopeful when we can set realistic goals, figure out how to achieve them, all the while believing in our own capabilities. So, hope is, in fact, a learned skill. According to Snyder, as children, we learn hopeful thinking to the extent that we have relationships characterized by boundaries, consistency, and support. When these elements are missing, we have no way of learning or practicing hopeful thinking. We may carry within us a learned helplessness that clouds our lives. Only with understanding the true nature of hope can we begin to see ourselves as agents, rather than victims.

Once we do accept that hope is a practice, another bit of research becomes relevant. In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, Brene Brown emphasizes that the cultural belief that everything should be fun, fast, and easy is inconsistent with hopeful thinking. What this really does is set us up for hopelessness. She says that: “When we experience something that is difficult and requires significant time and effort, we are quick to think, This is supposed to be easy; it’s not worth the effort, or This should be easier: it’s only hard and slow because I’m not good at it. Hopeful self-talk sounds more like, This is tough, but I can do it.” 

While Brown cautions us against the cultural notion of fast and easy, she also talks about the fact that not everything is supposed to be difficult. You may find that the process of reaching a certain goal is, in fact, fun and easy. This does not mean that such a goal has less value. What it does mean is that in order to be hopeful, we need to be aware that different goals require different processes. When a goal is tough, we need to stay flexible and develop alternatives. If we can develop our ability to tolerate disappointments as well as our faith in ourselves, we can start living more hopeful lives.

What is Indian culture?

New situations, in general, stretch us beyond our comfort zones. The experience of the new can either help us grow and expand. Or it can cause us to cling to the safety of our old world-views. That’s the big risk and challenge inherent in moving to a different country. It’s been a little more than a year since I shifted from India to the U.S. It’s been interesting to see how the new challenges the old, and how it is assimilated (or not) as Indians live their lives here.

Recently, I had a chance to observe an immigrant Indian father and his son in conversation. The son has more or less grown up in the U.S. (having moved here when he was in middle school) and is in his mid-twenties. While the group talked about the differences between India and the States, the son and the father got into an argument about whether the Indian tradition of touching elders’ feet to show respect made any sense. 

According to the father, even if the person whose feet he touched was a villager, that person would have a wealth of experience that his son might not have. The son answered by saying that he himself had an extensive experience of city life. Did that make him deserving of respect because of his “different” experience? And anyways, what his dad was talking about was knowledge, not wisdom. He did a quick search on his smart phone and read out the dictionary definition of wisdom which also included the fact that it was a commonly- held misconception that age grants wisdom. By this point, his father, eager to make his own point, looked obviously incensed. Other people intervened, and the father moved away.

Talking to the rest of us, the son said that he hadn’t liked touching people’s feet when he was in India and he didn’t like doing it here. Moving on from there, he brought up the topic of how no one he knew in India could tell him why Hindus don’t eat beef (he ate beef as did his father). At this point, I interjected that it was probably because Krishna – one of our Gods – was a cowherd and by association, the cow is considered holy. The son said, see, no one there could ever explain that.

Later on, while coming back home, I thought about this conversation. It could have easily been a conversation between a father and son in India except that the cultural differences raised questions that might not have been raised there. It was true that in all my years in India, no one had ever told me either why beef was not eaten by Hindus. It was just the norm. Most people had never even thought about it, even those who religiously went to the temple. It was only when I came to the U.S, when I saw people around me eating beef that I thought and came up with the Krishna explanation.

It is interesting how much we accept without a second thought. Sometimes, it’s because we are part of something bigger; sometimes, because we are not encouraged to think at all. But moving to a different country and a different culture challenges our assumptions. It can be a call to truly understand the essence of our native cultures and integrate it with new beliefs. If we don’t eat beef and choose to touch elders’ feet to show respect, shouldn’t we at least know why we are doing it? Shouldn’t we also have the choice to not touch those said feet if we feel no real respect? And isn’t practice without understanding the meaning pointless? Isn’t it just blind obedience, an unthinking, unconscious going along?  

Group Dynamics for Introverts and Highly Sensitive People (HSPs) – 1

As an introvert, I like interacting with people one on one, am not very good at making small talk and tend to be on the quieter side when I am in a new group of people. Since I am also an HSP, I tend to get over-stimulated easily – so if I’m already stimulated beyond my comfort level, and then have to interact with new people, I tend to get even quieter than usual.

But this, as I realized while reading Elaine Aron’s The Highly Sensitive Person, is not a good idea at all. Have you ever thought of how people in a new group react when you are quiet? Aron says that HSPs often fail to grasp that the silent person gains more and more influence over time. This is because the group may be waiting for us to speak up, to come out and declare our own opinion and position. It may also be concerned about giving us a chance to speak. And most importantly, it could be unconsciously worried about our quietness. Aron says that the group wants to know, “Are you in the group or out? Are you sitting there judging them? Are you unhappy and about to leave?”

One of the ways in which this tension plays out is that as a defense tactic, the group might reject us before we can (possibly) reject them. So, when in a new group setting, it is important for introverts and HSPs to join in with an appropriate degree of enthusiasm. And if we can’t, it’s important to reassure the group members that we are not, in any way, rejecting them or thinking of leaving the group. We may want to communicate that we feel part of the group just by listening. Or we can emphasize any positive feelings that we have about the group or any group members. We could also tell them that we’ll speak up when we feel ready or request them to ask us again later. What’s important is that we communicate our interest in being a part of the group. 

Understanding these dynamics can also help introverts and HSPs prepare beforehand when we know we have to interact with a new group. We can make sure that we are well rested. We can think in advance about possible topics of conversation. In a nutshell, we can get ready to present our best selves to the group. In the end, the awareness of how groups operate and acting on this awareness can help us manage our lives and interactions as introverted and HSP people better.

Intuition - Does it help or hinder your decisions?

Do you think of yourself as intuitive? Do you wonder why your intuition does not serve you better? Shouldn’t it make your life easier? Shouldn’t it help you figure out the path you are supposed to walk on? In her widely acclaimed book The Highly Sensitive Person, Elaine Aron talks about intuition in a way that answers all these questions. Generally, being highly intuitive is thought to be a gift, a trait that can help us make better choices. 

Aron flips this commonly-held notion on its head. She says that highly intuitive people are, in fact, likely to falter when trying to uncover and discover their vocation. Why is this so? One of the main reasons is that being highly intuitive also means that we are hyper-aware of our inner voices speaking of countless possibilities. 

Deciding which of these voices to follow is very difficult. Aron says that our inner dialogue goes something like this: “Yes, it would be desirable just to serve others, thinking little of my material gain. But that rules out a lifestyle with time to pursue the finer things in life. And both exclude the actualizing of my artistic gifts. And I have always admired the quiet life, centred in family. Or should I be centred in the spiritual? But that is so up in the air when I admire a life close to the earth.” So, on and on these voices go, echoing the far reaches of our soul, speaking for all the people we might possibly become. 

Aron says: “If you’re flooded with such voices, you will probably have trouble with decisions of all sorts; very intuitive people usually do.” So, how can we resolve this tension, these threads pulling apart and never letting us weave our lives into a whole?  

Elaine Aron advocates pulling in the opposite direction by deliberately engaging our rational side. She asks us to pare down our never-ending list of options to two or three after evaluating the pros and cons of each choice. This approach makes us whole - it helps us bring into fruition some of the possibilities that are dormant within us. It also forces us into maturing and accepting that in one life, we can be anything we choose to be, but not everything.

It must be true

In a New York Times article, British author and journalist Rose George tells stories of small-town Indian girls and their experience of their first periods. She describes their horror: “Khushi knew it was cancer. Ankita thought she was injured. None of the girls knew why they were suddenly bleeding, why their stomachs were “paining,” as Indian English has it. They cried and were terrified and then they asked their mothers. And their mothers said, you are normal. You are menstruating. You are a woman now.”

“But that is not all. The girls, whose names I’ve changed here for the sake of their privacy, were also told: when you menstruate, don’t cook food because you will pollute it. Don’t touch idols because you will defile them. Don’t handle pickles because they will go rotten with your touch.”

Rose George continues, “Pickles, I asked Ankita? Yes, madam, she told me, in her schoolyard in rural Uttar Pradesh. My mother says it is so. Her mother believed it, and her mother before her. It must be true.”

It must be true. If we believe what we told, it is then natural to go along with it even if it discounts our very essence. It is only when someone comes along that questions norms that we thought were set in stone, does any kind of change happen.

In her book, Revolution from Within, Gloria Steinem talks about how one group of women was challenged to think of their own bodies, and in turn, their own selves, differently. The catalyst in this case was Ela Bhatt, the social activist and lawyer who is known throughout the world as the founder of SEWA (Self Employed Women’s Association) with its headquarters in Ahmedabad, India. The story is from the formative days of the organization. Steinem talks about how once the work of forming SEWA was done, Ela Bhatt suggested that the founding group celebrate by going for a holiday together.

This founding group was made of “self-employed women”  who came from a  group that was the poorest of the poor – In India, “self-employed women” is a blanket term for women who do piece-work jobs, sell vegetables in the bazaars, carry construction materials on their heads at construction sites, collect paper from garbage dumps and so on. These were the women who didn’t believe they had any rights, whose work wasn’t valued, who wrestled everyday with problems like having to bribe the local police to sell their wares on the street. 

These women had never thought that they could take a holiday away from their families. Once Ela Bhatt had managed to convince them and make other arrangements for their families in their absence, they all set off in a rickety bus to visit religious places nearby. Everything went well until they came to a temple that could only be reached by crossing a river. In Hinduism, menstruating women are not allowed in temples. Obviously, there were women in the group who had their periods. These women were convinced that if they crossed the river, the boat would capsize and they would be punished for defying traditions. As they couldn’t swim, they would all drown.

Steinem says: “By appealing to every emotion from curiosity to defiance, Ela finally convinced them to get in the boat and consign themselves to the wide river and fate.” What happened when they crossed the river was that, well, nothing happened. After the women had placed their offerings in the temple, they returned back, and again – nothing happened.

For the first time in their lives, these women had flouted the rules that denigrated them, and they had come out unscathed. This was a defining point in the history of SEWA, which went on to become one of the most powerful women’s trade unions in India, and one of the largest in the world. With that experience, the women had understood that “If women’s bodies were not so “unclean” and inferior after all, perhaps their work was not so inferior either.”