Nebraska celebrates the International Day of Hope on Saturday, July 12, 2025 with a hope adventure from Omaha to Lincoln!
- Social media event links: Facebook
- 9-11am: Omaha, NE.
- 1-3pm: Lincoln, NE. Hope prints at Constellation Studios.
- 4-6pm: Lincoln, NE. Hope at play: activities at LUX Center for the Arts
- Music by Orion Walsh
- Free and open to the public. All are welcome.
- Participation in the various events is up to you – a la carte.
“Hope is a perceived capability to derive pathways to desired goals, and motivate oneself via agency thinking to use those pathways.” ~Prof. C.R. (Rick) Snyder
Hope Musings:
- The scope of our hope is regulated by our core beliefs (What is the world like?), our core values (What chosen qualities of being and doing matter most to us?), and our vision (What kind of world do we want?).
- Mental wellbeing = hope (waypower (goals thinking + pathways thinking) + willpower (confidence = agency = self-efficacy)) + happiness (emotional wellbeing).
Three dimensions of the good life and corresponding approaches to hope:
- The happy life: pleasure/positive emotion is the target of one’s goal setting.
- The meaningful life: Purpose is hope writ large. Purpose is about the positive change we seek to create in the world around us. Purpose can be thought of as an umbrella goal that integrates all of our present goals, and informs all of our future goal setting.
- The interesting life: characterized by curiosity and spontaneity. Hope extends as far as one’s current interests.
Beacons of hope: Nebraska ranks 9th in wellbeing as a state. Omaha ranks 12th, and Lincoln ranks 6th in terms of wellbeing nationally at the city level.
Nebraska is inscribed with hope thanks to the iconography of the philosopher, Hartley Burr Alexander.
- Left: SPES (hope) is on a door at the Joslyn Museum (Omaha, NE).
- Middle: The Sower represents generativity, a hope-based virtue, and is casting seeds of hope to the west from atop the Nebraska State Capitol (Lincoln, NE).
- Right: the virtue HOPE is located to the west on the ceiling of the rotunda in the Nebraska State Capitol (Lincoln, NE).
The development of hope begins through play:
Morrow, Rowena. “Hope, entrepreneurship and foresight.” Regional frontiers of entrepreneurship research: Compilation of papers of the third AGSE international entrepreneurship research exchange [CD]. Melbourne: Swinburne University (2006): 606-618.
“Entrepreneurs, especially those in the social realm, appear to enjoy such playful, generative thinking, using it to generate ideas and opportunities for action.”
Pearson, Beth Lauren. Effects of a cognitive behavioral play intervention on children’s hope and school adjustment. Diss. Case Western Reserve University, 2008.