Nurturing Hope through the Hope Tree

Hope is one of the most significant personal qualities that every individual should have in life. Professor Martin Seligman, the founder of Positive Psychology (PP), postulated that hope improves mental health, boosts happiness, and accelerates the quality of people’s lives. Possessing hope can help individuals grapple with problems positively which will help them to manage stress and anxiety more wisely. This way, they can be more resilient in the face of potentially detrimental events.

Desmond Tutu, a South African human activist, has said, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” To be hopeful is to have a positive attitude towards life, and to be able to see opportunities in challenges, rather than challenges in opportunities. It is about a belief that we can overcome challenges, adversity, and hostility.

On 28th January 2022, Begawan Learning Centre involved the Eco-Warriors in a learning session entitled “Hope Tree”. In this session, the students learned about the significance of having hopes that they want to pursue for the future. They were asked to think about their future hopes and dreams, write them down on a piece of paper, and hang this paper on a tree. More importantly, they were encouraged to be confident enough to possess big dreams.

Surprisingly, most of the students wrote down more than one dream that they want to achieve. Some of them want to be YouTubers, businessmen, doctors, teachers, just to name a few. Others want to change their parents’ lives by being successful in academic achievements and careers. Sang Tu, for example, wrote down 15 dreams that he wants! He is very confident that he will be able to do many things in the future. This way, he can make his parents proud and happy, and have a better life himself.

After the session ended, the facilitators at the learning centre did not forget to tell the students that hope is like a tree. If they want to turn it into reality, they need to nurture it, take care of it, and fight for it. Unless they do this, their hopes will just remain as dreams that will eventually die and disappear. Just like nurturing a tree, nurturing a hope requires commitment, consistency, and resiliency. (Ircham Maulana)