A word from the CEO: Hope is an action rather than a feeling

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Whenever tough years occur in agriculture I always focus on being optimistic and trying to be upbeat.

Keeping the year in perspective is easy to say but every individual has different experiences and stresses which means generalising is not helpful. That is why I often struggle when people talk drought. It seems to externalise the problem or challenge. For me, whenever a problem is outside my influence or control, that is when I feel most vulnerable and helpless – there is nothing I can do!

The other day I read a piece which I found very powerful and has totally changed my world view.

It describes hope. Hope is an action rather than a feeling.

An action with purpose.

I encourage us all to embrace hope and take action to make a difference when we deal with what we know is ahead.

Here is an excerpt from that article ‘Hope in the Dark’ by Rebecca Solnit.

Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognise uncertainty, you recognise that you may be able to influence the outcomes – you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others.

Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists adopt the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting.

It is the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand. We may not, in fact, know them afterwards either, but they matter all the same, and history is full of people whose influence was most powerful after they were gone.

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