The wealthiest are not the most hopeful. 

This spring, the Global Flourishing Study reported that the richest countries are not those with the greatest sense of meaning, purpose, and well-being. By some metrics, Indonesia, Nigeria, and the Philippines take the lead. 

Another nationally representative sample of American adults reported that most do not feel hopeful about society or humanity. 

In a recent conversation with a friend in South Africa, the most unequal country in the world, she described the contrast between some hopeless parents she knows in an affluent suburb (during apartheid, reserved for Whites only), and hopeful ones in the neighboring Zulu community (where unemployment is over 70% and HIV nears 50%).

When planning is confused with hoping, the virtue never matures.

I study hope in contexts of adversity. The skeptics of hope are often not those suffering, but the affluent who read about it from a safe distance.

Hope is not a feeling. It is a virtue that gets stronger with practice. Like a muscle, it needs resistance and exercise to grow.

That is not to say that hope is everywhere in the midst of poverty. Famine and violence are life-shattering. There is no flourishing in a drought. Money buys a good life to a certain threshold. However, affluence can impede hope’s exercise, allowing its muscles to remain flaccid. Then, during times of uncertainty and pain, underdeveloped hope reveals itself problematic.

If ordering products online or asking an AI-chatbot—frictionless actions—to solve or distract me from my problems, I may not learn to rely on a friend or sit with uncertainty. If most of my efforts had a high success probability (due to prestigious degrees, family connections, or a healthy economy), I may be too afraid to fail because I would have never experienced life after defeat. A lack of obstacles may undermine the development of resilience. 

Failure’s afterlife is where the magic happens. When hope does poke through adversity, like a flower blooming through asphalt, it is of a different grade. It has a kind of quality that can only be earned, not inherited. 

In my home country of Brazil, I’ve witnessed hope in the teachers who commit to a better future for their students. They do not teach because it makes them happy, but because education is their investment in the community’s future. A stubborn pledge to support the next generation.

This hope is the same as the one portrayed in the Academy Award-winning I’m Still Here—a bold cry amid a military dictatorship. Ending an oppressive regime requires more than good planning skills. Hope is a required ingredient for collective action. Hope does not assume flawless plans. Its morality is in the dedication to avoid the dead-end of despair. Those who survive, hope forward.

To immerse ourselves in this virtue, my research team conducted a series of interviews with 13 moral exemplars in a Zulu community with which we have a long-standing partnership. When these exemplars were asked about their moments of greatest hope, they recounted their moments of greatest sorrow. Together, we defined the virtue of hope as the purposeful vision for the common good that encourages others despite adversity.

Although hope is often considered a positive emotion, it implies uncertainty and often involves fear and oppression.

Hope is not the absence of depression. Augustine of Hippo was described as depressed or pessimistic, yet he warded off despair by writing, committing to his faith, and encouraging others.

Hope is not the opposite of pessimism. Optimism can be superstitious or aimless. It can evade responsibility or cling to good vibes. People can simultaneously be pessimistic in the short term, and hopeful in the long term. It is possible to believe your candidate will lose the election (pessimism) yet still go to the polls (hope). 

Hope is a civic and moral virtue that aspires to justice and social change, even at a significant personal cost. Such as Dr. King’s hope in the Birmingham jail, Viktor Frankl’s in the holocaust, and Paulo Freire’s in exile. Hope is the act of attending a civil rights march, being one of millions, across hundreds of events, across many years, that will painstakingly bend the moral arc toward justice.

Sometimes tragedies destroy progress that has taken decades—or centuries—to build. Such as the fire in the Notre Dame Cathedral or executive orders from an angry leader. Overcoming such devastation requires a long-standing, unwavering dedication to rebuild. 

Virtuous hope requires a different relationship with time, often beyond one’s lifespan. A goal that is bigger than oneself, with outcomes outlasting death. Sewn in one generation; reaped in another. 

Hope is an immigrant getting his CDL so his daughter can someday attend dental school.

Optimism masquerades as hope. But optimism grinds to a halt when things get bad enough. When optimism goes through the fire, it either rots into cynicism or metamorphosizes into hope. The difference is the relational and communal support to sustain the virtuous pursuit.

Another analysis from the Global Flourishing Study explains that hope is predicted by involvement in a faith community and strong family relationships. These are the sources of hope, cultivated with time and intentionality.

Virtues are habits, daily disciplines. Extraordinary acts of hope and collective action are not built overnight. They require regular small cultivation, like reading a book to your child amid exhaustion, or relentlessly pitching to publishers, knowing that it probably will get rejected.

Writing with unknown publication, researching with improbable funding, teaching amid the AI revolution, praying through doubt, and parenting needy humans to someday be good citizens. These are my daily disciplines of hope. What are yours?

Kendra Thomas is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Hope College and studies how hope develops among parents and youth in South Africa and her home country of Brazil.