Chapter 3: Cultivating Hope and Resolve in Perilous Times: Transforming Despair Into Adaptive Leadership

Over the years that I have taught my Food for Thought class at Fairhaven College at Western Washington University, I have learned that as students track the pathways of the varied foods they eat from planting through processing to harvest to waste and disposal, they are both fascinated to learn more about where their food comes from and devastated by the human and ecological costs of large-scale agriculture. Their first response as they face the magnitude and scale of the challenges we face is often a sense of powerlessness and despair. This “what’s the point?” response is all too common in undergraduate classrooms across America as our students recognize that their future is unsustainable in both economic and ecological domains. As they begin to understand that future generations will be living on an irreparably damaged planet and comprehend the human injustices connected with our food systems, some feel angry, and others feel overwhelmed, depressed, cynical, or guilty. Nearly everyone feels sad and fearful and experiences strong emotions of grief for the planet and their own uncertain futures—grief just as strong and powerful as the grief we might feel for a loved one who has died. Our students are confronted with daunting global problems, and the death of their illusions about our ability to successfully address these challenges, and, we, their faculty, are often at a loss about how to respond to these overwhelming emotions.