Perhaps Something Is Happening

Yesterday I spent some time walking around Belfast during the Fleadh, one of the world’s largest celebrations of Irish music and culture, and the city was absolutely alive. Major artists were playing on big stages, traditional music spilling out of pubs and cafés, and little children sitting on street corners playing fiddles, flutes and other traditional instruments.

More than a million visitors have been recorded at the festival, which is quite remarkable for a city the size of Belfast (Northern Ireland only has a population of 1.5 million!).

As I walked through the city centre taking it all in, my mind went back to a very different Belfast and to walking into the city with my granny when I was a boy. I can still remember being stopped by armed soldiers who checked our bags for explosives before allowing us through, and then walking past shops that had been bombed.

That was Belfast too.

Yesterday, decades later, I was walking some of those same streets surrounded by music, laughter, families and people who had travelled from all over the world to be there. At one point I passed the Europa Hotel, which became famous during the Troubles for being one of the most bombed hotels in the world, and I couldn’t help thinking about just how much can change in the course of a lifetime.

Those of you who know me well will know that I can sometimes appear overly optimistic about life and our world, but there is nothing naive about my hope.

I remember the soldiers and the bombed-out buildings, and I remember growing up in a place where at times it was genuinely difficult to imagine that things could ever be different. So when I tell you that I believe the future can be better, I truly mean it.

My optimism is grounded in what I call realistic hope. It doesn’t mean pretending that everything is fine or ignoring the difficult realities around us. In fact, I think it’s almost the opposite. Realistic hope looks honestly at what is, sometimes in all its brokenness, while refusing to believe that what is must always be what will be.

There’s a line in The Imaginal Coach that I’ve been thinking about:

“You may not see the butterfly yet. But that doesn’t mean nothing is happening.”

Sometimes change begins long before we can see any evidence of it. That can be true in a person, a relationship or an organization, and yesterday I was reminded that it can even be true of a city.

I increasingly believe that the future is never neutral. We are all playing some small part in shaping it through the stories we tell, the possibilities we choose to imagine, the conversations we have and the decisions we make each day.

Yesterday, walking through those Belfast streets filled with music, I was reminded again that the way things are today does not have to be the way things will always be.

So whatever part of your life or world feels particularly stuck at the moment, don’t give up too quickly on what it could become.

Perhaps something is happening.

Oh, and the Fleadh is happening next year, in the first week of August, so if you wanted to go on that trip to Ireland, do it!