Hope -- Thinking With Feathers During Covid-19

 

Hope Is the Thing With Feathers - (254)

By Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Some scientists think birds might be able to detect the low-pitched rumbling of a distant hurricane – a sound that is too low for humans to hear-- but there’s no proof so far. Birds probably notice the storm first as winds gradually increase over a matter of hours, bringing along scattered rain showers.

Previous studies suggest some birds, like sparrows, can sense changes in barometric pressure and adjust their behavior, says Patrick Jodice, a wildlife biologist at Clemson University. This gives birds time to seek shelter ahead of damaging winds.

Kyle Horton, an ornithologist from Colorado State University, says that birds have two main strategies to survive a hurricane: they can find some way to weather the storm or to avoid it.

(Jenny Howard. “What Do Birds Do in a Hurricane?” Hakai Magazizne: Coastal Science and Societies. January 2, 2020.)

As winds increase, of course, all creatures take notice. Some large birds may fly away ahead of the storm, especially if they don’t have nests with eggs or dependent young, but most species stay put and seek shelter. Woodpeckers may cling to the downwind side of a sturdy tree trunk or hide inside a hole. Cardinals, buntings and other songbirds find a spot deep in dense thickets, protected from the gales. Backyard birds take cover under sheds or on the lee side of houses, waiting for the worst to be over.

(Kenn and Kimberly Kaufman. “What Happens to Birds in a Hurricane?” Reader's Digest. Updated August 27, 2020.)

Emily Dickinson's Bird in Peril

"Hope is the thing with feathers" (written around 1861) is a popular poem by the American poet Emily Dickinson. In the poem, she uses an extended metaphor: she portrays hope as a bird that lives within the human soul. This bird sings come rain or shine, gale or storm, good times or bad.

Hope – the metaphorically transformed strong-willed bird – sings its song “sweetest in the gale. Essentially, the poem seeks to remind readers of the power of hope and how little it requires of people facing the violent storms of life.

The speaker in the verse has heard the bird's singing in the coldest places and on the most unusual seas. But in the speaker's experiences, even the most extreme ones, the bird has never asked for anything in return: hope has been helpful in times of difficulty without asking of anything for itself. It ignores the misery and focuses on the beauty that still remains after the storm passes.

This simple, metaphorical description of hope as a bird singing in the soul is another example of Dickinson’s homiletic style, derived from Psalms and religious hymns. The verse is simple and intended primarily for spiritual edification. Dickinson's use of bird imagery may be an allusion to the Christian symbolism of doves – a preferred representation of the Holy Spirit

This is still an early poem for Dickinson, and neither her language nor her themes here are as complicated and explosive as they would become in her more mature work from the mid-1860s. Still, the reader finds a few of the verbal shocks that so characterize Dickinson’s mature style: the use of “abash,” for instance, to describe the storm’s potential effect on the bird, wrenches the reader back to the reality behind the pretty metaphor; while a singing bird cannot exactly be “abashed,” the word describes the effect of the storm – or a more general hardship – upon the speaker’s hopes.

Hope Now?

Do we have an indomitable entity within our human souls that enables us to conquer uncharted territories? In this terrible time of the COVID-19 pandemic, we find ourselves in an alien environment that threatens to destroy all hope. Businesses have been shut down, jobs lost, and friends and family are strangely distant. Futures that once seemed certain— vacations, holiday observances, weddings, graduations – are now in question.

Yet, through this deadly outbreak, we must rely on our “thing with feathers” – our eternal hope.

Contrary to how some people talk about hope, researchers don't view it as a passive emotional state. While colloquially people may say things like, "sit back and hope for the best," researchers who study hope say it's an active coping approach.

First, we must recognize and acknowledge the existence of our soulful friend. It is not simply a metaphor. Neither is hope a brand new concept in psychology. In 1991, the eminent positive psychologist Charles R. Snyder and his colleagues came up with “Hope Theory.”

According to their theory, hope consists of agency and pathways. The person who has hope has the will and determination that goals will be achieved, and a set of different strategies at their disposal to reach their goals. Put simply: hope involves the will to get there, and different ways to get there.

According to Snyder, there are at least three components that people can relate to hope, being:

1. You need to have focused thoughts. Goals are abstract mental targets that guide human behaviors.

2. You must develop strategies in advance in order to achieve these goals. Pathways thought entails the perceived ability to generate multiple routes to desired goals.

3. You have to be motivated to make the effort required to actually reach these goals. Agency thought entails the perceived ability to initiate and sustain movement along a pathway.

The more the individual believes in their own ability to achieve the components listed above, the greater the chance that they will develop a feeling of hope.

(C.R. Snyder, Kevin L. Rand, and David R. Sigmon. “Hope Theory: A Member of the Positive Psychology Family.” The Oxford Handbook of Hope. February 2018.)

“But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

In these dire times, our hope is being tested. Suffering and division are ever-present, and there doesn't seem a clear path forward. But psychologists say hope is not a luxury. For mental health, it's a necessity. Nancy Colier, a psychotherapist and interfaith minister, says …

"Most people think about it (hope) ... like the sprinkles on an ice cream, like it's great if it's there, but I think it's actually fundamental to our basic wellbeing.”

Decades of research show hope is a robust predictor of mental health. Not only does it make life more enjoyable, experts say, but hope also provides resilience against things like post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. Hope offers chemical benefits too, in the form of endorphins and lowered stress levels, things, experts say, make people more productive. Hope is a great resource for dealing with the mental anguish of COVID-19.

(Alia E. Dastagir. “Why it's so important to hope.” USA TODAY. October 10, 2020.)

Although hope and optimism are sometimes used interchangeably, researchers say they are distinct. Hope is about using personal agency to achieve a desired outcome. Optimism is when people expect good things to happen more than bad ones.

“Take things one day at a time. Remind yourself of what’s important in your life and why.”

– Misty Copeland, ballet dancer

"Both are about positive expectations for the future but one is about the individual driving work towards their goals ... and the other is that we believe things are going to work out and we're not sure how," Matthew Gallagher, an associate professor of clinical psychology at the University of Houston, said.

Colier says …

"Hope brings oxygen into our consciousness. If we generate hope, then we are motivated. We're motivated to act because we feel that there's possibility that the outcome that we want might happen. If we don't have hope, where do we find motivation?"

That feeling of being overwhelmed, psychologists say, can be mitigated by shifting attention from the big picture to the things people can control.

Colier says gratitude also is an important component of maintaining hope. It may not solve societal problems, but you can still be happy that you got your child to brush their teeth twice in one day. That you got them to smile once. That for five minutes, you were completely present. She says …

"Gratitude and appreciation end up stoking this fire of a larger hope. And those are well within our control. Make it very much in this moment. What can I hope for? And what can I do towards that? If we feel disempowered, we lean into hopelessness."

Wings To Fly

Hope is the thing with feathers residing as our soul. We exhibit our trust in conquering the virus as we – like the resilient bird – continue to sing during these dark times. Our hope will never require a payment for its assistance; it will only require the acceptance of its domicile within. Nothing is as strong as the human will acting under the grace of God. Hope allows the human will to fly … and, it also protects it during the most violent storms.