Grievance looks back and possibility looks forward. […] One challenge is embracing the effective and generative approach of possibility when we’re sure that we’re entitled to grievance. Toward better.
(Seth Godin)

Faith is the conviction about the not yet proven, the knowledge of the real possibility, the awareness of pregnancy. […] Faith like hope, is no prediction of the future, it is the vision of the present in a state of pregnancy.**
(Erich Fromm)

What if a grievance could be turned into a possibility? That would be quite a feat. The person who can do such a thing has only discovered how to live more vitally and deeply.

Whether acute or chronic in nature, grievance only pulls us deeper into itself, being aggrieved by more and more people and things that happen. It looks back both because it knows the wrong that has been done and it wants to return to the certainty that existed before the wrong.

Possibility, though, is born in uncertainty, is about letting go and letting come. Possibility opens more possibility. The trick is to become capable of both changing things for the better whilst being changed for the better ourselves i the process.

Erich Fromm claims that becoming people of faith is the key, people who know that something can be borne out of the same thing others are aggrieved over. Fromm qualifies what he’s claiming for faith:

It is certainty about the reality of the possibility – but it is not certainty in the sense of unquestionable predictability […] That is the paradox of faith: it is the certainty of the uncertain.**

When we pursue grievance we are wanting to step into certainty, when we pursue possibility, we are stepping into uncertainty. It is not faith in the impossible but in the possible.

We might say that someone is “actively pursuing a grievance” but it is more likely that they are expression passiveness, they want things to return to normal, to certainty. Faith in the possible is activeness, it is why we are changed while we’re changing things:

Faith is based on our experience of living, of transforming ourselves. Faith that others can change is the outcome of the experience I change.**

Grievance wants others to change first, in this it reveals its passiveness and impotence. Faith in possibility desires to change itself first and, so, displays its activeness and power.

Such people have highways in their hearts for travelling into a better future, shedding light on their way.

*From Seth Godin’s blog: Grievance and possibility;
**From Erich Fromm’s The Revolution of Hope;