Hope Deals the Hardest Blows

Did we all get a bit carried away? Did we allow ourselves to hope too much, to allow ourselves to dream the impossible dream? To dream that perhaps, just maybe, Ireland could get to the final of a Rugby World Cup (and maybe maybe just maybe we might just potentially, perhaps, win the feckin thing?). 

We were a hopeful and expectant nation. For the first time in a long time we had something to be collectively hopeful of. And it was a wonderful feeling. A great buzz swept across the country. Thousands of miles away on the other side of the world, Irish people who had left the country due to a complete lack of hope, were once again bursting with the stuff.  

Which made the defeat on Saturday morning even more difficult to take. As Foy Vance says in one of my favourite songs - hope deals the hardest blows. 

"If there's one thing that I know

It is the two shades of hope

One the enlightening soul

And the other is more like a hangman's rope

Well it's true, you may reap what you sow

But not that despair is the all-time low

Baby, hope deals the hardest blow"

It's true. But it's worth it.


Because if we do not hope we will never move beyond our current circumstances; we will never step back, see the bigger picture, believe in a better future and act to make it happen.

So after the blow that was delivered to a hopeful nation on Saturday, we have to pick ourselves up and find something else to be hopeful about, another dream to follow.  Perhaps it is now time  for us to start being hopeful about Ireland again. To hope that we can overcome the current challenges, hope that we can improve things, hope that in future things will be much better. 

In my work with social entrepreneurs, I have seen how hope can drive people to take action, how hope can help people overcome the greatest challenges, and how acting on this hope can bring about great changes......

..........and sure if changing Ireland doesn't work out for us, we've always got the footy.