ABSTRACT
I have been working on sustainability and, now, flourishing for almost 50 years, if you add environmental concerns as the precursor to sustainability. If I can ever explain why I have stuck with this path for so long without seeing much in the way of tangible gains, I would point to Havel’s definition of hope: “Hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out (Havel, 1990:182).” What I have been doing has always made sense to me. For a long time, I could not articulate the reasons that it did, but now I am much clearer about why we have begun to founder and flounder, but also about how to move forward toward flourishing.
