Bryan Stevenson

It's the thing that will get us to believe we can do things that maybe other people think we can't do.

I have to give it to my clients, and I can't give someone something I don't have.

And so for me, it's an orientation of the Spirit.

You know, Vaclav Havel, the great Czech leader, talked about this.

wanting all kinds of things during the time of Soviet domination.

And he said, we wanted money and recognition and resources, but the only thing we needed, he said, was hope.

And Havel says the kind of hope you need is not a preference for optimism over pessimism.

It's not

a pie-in-the-sky thing.

He says it's an orientation of the Spirit, a willingness to sometimes position yourself in a hopeless place and be a witness.

And that, I do think, is the gift I've been given by so many people who've come before me, so many people who have done things with fewer resources, fewer opportunities, fewer supports than I have.

And it's what I want to give to the people who come after me.

is, you know, this idea that if we can labor long and save lives and change the law and create perhaps a slightly more just system, then we have to continue to hope we can do more.

Yeah.

I think learning about hope...

is a really important action item.

Sometimes I think we don't think of learning as an action item, but I do.

I think to learn is to do something.

And learning the stories of what hopeful people did despite the odds is one of the most important things we can do to prepare ourselves, to train ourselves, our minds and our bodies to do hopeful things in our lives.

Just like we have to train ourselves if we want to be fit or run a race.