Hope is lighting a fire

Hope is lighting a fire 

People often confuse hope with evidence. As if hope is only valid when the data says things will turn out fine. As if, without proof, it’s naïve to believe in something better.

But there is no evidence that a rising fascist regime will fall. Just as there was initially no evidence apartheid would end peacefully. Or that enslaved people would win freedom. Or that women would vote. Or that queer love would be decriminalised. These victories weren’t born of evidence. They were born of vision, of insistence, of a refusal to accept the world as it was.

This is not a time to live without hope. This is the exact moment when hope must be lit – a spark carried in the imagination, kindled in community, and fed by stories of transformation. (Or as someone suggested at a gathering I attended this week, chuck all the outdated ideas that perpetuate disconnection, social and environmental harm into a heap, and make a bonfire.)

The more I investigate, the more I understand that Hope is not a feeling. It’s a practice, a discipline and a way of seeing. 

To keep the fire burning through collapse and chaos, we must feed it. With tiny, defiant acts. With ancestral-level vision. With grassroots solutions that seem laughably small, until they take root. Remember - oak trees begin as seeds. Revolutions often begin with someone singing, someone daring to dream, someone choosing not to look away.

The question isn’t “Where is the evidence of the vision being achievable?” rather “Who are we becoming? What are we willing to imagine into existence?”

Our imagination is constrained by what we believe is possible. So part of the work is to examine those beliefs – to stretch our sense of possibility, our sense of aliveness, our sense of potential.

That’s why I talk so much about practices. If hope is like a fire, it needs the right conditions–fuel, shelter, and committed tending.

Here are some intentional acts that help me maintain a hopeful disposition. They are small, doable, and shaped to fit the rhythms of family life:

Oneness and transcendence

I sing and play music with my whānau (family). At times I ohm, pray, offer karakia, do breathwork and listen to music to elevate my state. And when I’m home again in Paekākāriki, I’ll join a choir–because nothing brings me into vibrational alignment faster than shared song.

Most spiritual and cultural traditions have practices that move people into a flow or ‘alpha’ state: gospel choirs, kapa haka, drum circles, chants, clapping, communal prayer. These are portals to the experience of oneness. I’ve rejected religion as a tool of power and obedience – but I won’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I’ll take the good bits, thanks.

Creating expansiveness

Einstein said we have a choice: to see nothing as a miracle, or everything. I choose the latter. Not as a belief, but as a posture, a way of softening into awe. When I do, something in me opens, my mind shifts out of survival mode and into spaciousness. I become more able to dream, to vision, to sense the shimmer of what could be. From that loosened, lifted place, I can dare to imagine better worlds.

Ancestral thinking

To think like an ancestor is to care for the wellbeing of grandchildren yet to come, even those who aren’t your own. It’s an orientation I see embedded in many Indigenous ways of being, but one that’s been hollowed out by Western individualism.

Looking at my parents’ generation, I notice that grandparenting has become more about joy than responsibility. It’s a beautiful shift in many ways - well-earned, even. But in a culture that elevates personal fulfillment above collective responsibility, I worry we’ve lost something essential.

To me, leaving out the intergenerational layer is like living on fruit juice instead of whole fruit: sweet and easy, but missing the fibre that nourishes and sustains.

When we reclaim not just the pleasure but the purpose of grandparenting, we root ourselves in a time-honoured continuum. We step into something larger than ourselves—a lineage of care, wisdom, and responsibility that threads the generations together.

This is the legacy work of ancestral thinking: to be grandparents not just to our kin, but to all the children born of our time.

Be a portal

Women’s bodies are literal portals – capable of bringing new life into the world. But I love the idea that this isn’t just biological. We can all become portals for what is yet to come. Ways of being. New systems. Stories not yet told. Hope not yet born. 

I hope some of these ideas land with you and support you to stretch the frame of what feels possible.

I wish you a hopeful week x Megan

P.S. I’ve been quietly crafting something special – just for you, my early adopters. It’s a heartfelt thank you and a gentle nudge to consider becoming a paid subscriber to The Hope Dispatch. Keep an eye on your inbox… I’ll be sharing more about it very soon.