Pag-asa: Nurturing active hope in dark times
Where do we find hope in our blue and burning planet?
Hello mga ka-Ugnayan!
Jen here, disrupting our regular Liham ng Ugnayan delivery schedule to bring you this late post for our 10th wellbeing theme: Pag-asa or Hope.
This last quarter of the year brings with it a deluge, in personal, professional and public spaces: holiday gatherings — navigating all that in the midst of holiday traffic, and dealing with some people we’d rather not interact with there; work deadlines — meeting all our deliverables by the end of the year; raging typhoons and floods — that have been devastating different parts of the country.
Our 9th wellbeing theme “Tibay ng Loob” (which we chose to call Inner Strength) could have been translated into Resilience. However, it often comes with the thought that we just need to be “strong enough” to withstand the deluge that comes our way. Adjust nalang tayo ng adjust. That can sometimes feel like a passive acceptance of the injustice or wrongness we see in this world.
You might hope to right some of those wrongs, and you might recognize your power to change some of these circumstances, but it can sometimes feel overwhelming and impossible.
This edition of Liham ng Ugnayan may feel heavy, and you may also feel lightness. I think it will depend on how we see things, and ultimately, what we choose to do.
I share these main themes in the sections below:
Corals as a symbol of hope
The role of creativity and connection in hope-building
Finding hope around us
Hope in the attempt
Hope as not a bright and shiny thing
Let’s dive in?
Pag-asa
(Tagalog) pag-asam; tiwala; pananalig; inaasahan; pagkakataon
(English) hope; trust; faith; dependence; anticipation; chance
Corals are our symbol of hope. 🪸🫀
Even if these times may seem bleak for corals and humans alike, healthy coral reefs show us a vision of a world that is possible when we live in balance and harmony with one another. They are the rainforests of the sea — turning carbon dioxide into oxygen, and providing a source of nourishment, when we protect these places for new life to grow.
Our country is part of the Coral Triangle1, which is considered the world’s center of marine biodiversity.
In 2023, the Verde Island Passage (also known as the global center of marine shorefish biodiversity), a marine corridor passing through Batangas, Mindoro, Marinduque, and Romblon — was declared a “Hope Spot,”2 or a special place that is scientifically identified as critical to the health of the ocean.
Sadly, reefs around the world are bleaching en masse as the ocean temperatures rise due to climate change.3 Corals coexist with tiny algae called zooxanthellae. Rising ocean temperatures can lead to the zooxanthellae expelling themselves from the coral's tissue, exposing its white skeleton, which we often see as coral bleaching.
Some corals, on the other hand, exhibit another effect: "colorful bleaching” — wherein dying corals gain more pigment, and glow in vibrant shades of bright pink, purple and orange.
It was found that colorful bleaching events occur when corals produce "layer of sunscreen" to protect against harmful rays and create a glowing display that researchers believe encourages algae to return — like a heartbreaking final cry for help, as corals try to catch the algae’s attention.
We need creativity and connection to grow hope.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about how we might co-create “art” in order to convey issues in a way that really connects with people.
If we can’t connect with people simply on the basis of science, then how might we, like colorful bleaching coral, use heartbreaking beauty and art to catch their attention and tap into their emotions?
In my ongoing learning to be an expressive arts facilitator, I try to adopt this mindset in art creation:
Hindi kailangang “maganda,” ang mahalaga ay totoo.
What might that hope, joy and beauty look like:
For climate scientists who see the grimmest of projections?
For farmers whose months of labor in cultivating the land get swept away in a matter of hours?
For young people at home seeing news and feeling powerless to change anything?
It can be hard to feel hopeful — to trust and to care.
I don’t see trust and care in the system that makes political prisoners of peasant organizers, land and ocean defenders. That takes advantage of the plight of farmers and fisherfolk to push them further into oppression. That mines our natural resources at the expense of the health and safety of those who live around it.
But it’s also hard to exist in this world without trust in the people around us. Systems are not unbreakable. People make systems, and people can break them.
Hope is around us when we choose to pay attention to it.
I remember that there are people who care for our wellbeing — people who are not only not trying to hurt us, but are also doing their best in their own ways to create a better world for all of us; people who show us that a different way of being is possible.
I see hope in the wildlife filmmaker and photographer Boogs Rosales who reminds us of all the beauty on this planet that we need to protect.
I see hope in groups like Mako Micropress that raise our consciousness about systemic injustices, and create zines while enabling us to create our own so we can also raise our consciousness with others.
I see hope in groups like Good Food Community, who are imagining a different future for our farmers and our food system, and inviting us to co-create that future with them today through community-shared agriculture, collective knowledge-sharing and skills-building.4
I see hope in the political prisoners at the Correctional Institute for Women, who believed that fighting for the liberties of their community’s right to land was greater than their own individual liberties.5
I see hope in groups like Pinay Collection, who are engaging the Filipino diaspora around issues happening in our country, offering them ways to engage with these issues and be meaningfully makabayan.
I see hope in the small group of advocates we were with last week for Good Energy — how they choose to resist and persist in their respective lines of work, how they started off as strangers at beginning of our Likha Sigla workshop, and have become a group connected through a shared purpose and love for people and planet.
There are countless more “hope spots”, and these are just some of the ones that have been in my periphery in the past few months.
Kung magpipinta ka ng litrato ng ninanais mong buhay para sa mga kababayan mo, anong magiging itsura nito? | If you had to paint the picture of the life you want for your countrymen, what would it look like?
Saan-saan o kani-kanino mo natatagpuan ang mga “pook ng pag-asa” para sa hinaharap na iyon sa kasalukuyan? | Where and with whom do you find the “hope spots” for that future in the present?
“I believe that all organizing is science fiction - that we are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced.”
- adrienne maree brown
Hope is in the attempt.
There will be times when we feel hopeless — because we don’t have the answers, or the certainty of favorable outcomes. Some say “it’s the hope that kills you”. But we don’t know either way what could happen, and in that very uncertainty is hope.
Sometimes, the trying is hope enough.6
We may not see the changes we wish to see in our lifetimes but our actions can give us a sense of agency in our present, and maybe, make the struggle less difficult for others in the future.
Hope isn't always this bright and shiny thing.
Hope can also come with feelings like rage, grief, fear, sadness and frustration. Sometimes those emotions fuel hope, but only when we transmute those emotions into action.
Sometimes, our hope leads us to dead ends, but, and maybe this is the weird, magical elf that lives in a dark corner of my soul...but I do believe any act of kindness or goodness matters, even if we don't think it amounts to much. I find that really meaningfully building hope isn’t in the big, news-making or award-winning moments.
In the grand scheme of things, this is what I believe:
The small things are nothing and everything at the same time.
In a marine ecosystem, each coral, algae, fish, invertebrate is doing its thing to a maintain healthy balance in their shared environment. The existence and actions of one creature may seem insignificant in isolation, but so powerful when seen as a constellation of actions.
Malaki man o maliit, ano ang iyong lugar sa sistemang ito? | Whether big or small, what do you see as your place in this system?
Umaasa at kumikilos,
Jen Horn | @pagbubuo
🌊 Tagapagpagpadaloy | Ugnayan Cards
The Coral Triangle Hope Spot: Valuable and Vulnerable by Mission Blue
Hope Spots by Mission Blue
Join us for an upcoming collab event with Good Food Community this coming December 1! Click on the IG post below to learn more.
