Hope
i can't live in a world without hope again
hope dangles on a string
like slow spinning redemption
Hope. Sometimes it’s all we have. When we despair, when we wallow in sadness, when it feels all so hopeless, we can reach down into our well of emotions and come up with a little bucket of hope. Without it, we wither away.
We hope for big things like world peace and while we know that’s a somewhat unattainable goal, the hope is always there, lingering, hanging on. We hope for small things like good weather on the day of a scheduled outing. And the million things in between: we hope for our favorite sports team to win it all, we hope for a good night’s sleep, for the workday to go by fast, for good fortune, a date to go well.
I find myself in various states of hoping lately. I have hope that my future won’t be as lonely as my present. I hope that future includes the chance to love and be loved again. I hope my kids are happy and my dog lives a long life and I hope the coming winter is a mild one. I’ve been letting myself hope, something I stopped doing for a bit while I wallowed in my own sort of despair. I need something to hang onto, something to grasp in the middle of the night when I wake up with fear in my heart.
We all need this. The past two years or so have been bleak for everyone. Most of us have experienced a change in our psyche, and it’s taken a toll on our mental health. What better to help us out of all this than to have hope. I know it’s hard, I know this world seems unjust and unfairly tilted toward the privileged. We hope things change. We hope the future includes an empathetic bend toward people in need. We hope for things like health care for everyone, canceled student debt, relief for the houseless. And while it may seem sometimes like that hope is misplaced, that we are never going to see those things happen, we have to hold on to that small glimmer which resides in the deepest parts of our soul, that little speckle of hope.
Back in 2002, I was going through what was then the worst time of my life. My sense of hopelessness was deep and unabiding; I couldn’t let go of it now matter how I tried. Truth is, I didn’t really try very hard. My lack of hope was so profound that I saw no reason to reach for anything that might bring me light. Living with hopelessness is to not really live at all. There’s nothing to look forward to, nothing to grab onto to guide you along while you try to emerge from the darkness. If you try to emerge at all. As the old song goes, you’ve got to have hope. Without it, the journey is lonely, dark and bleak.
I eventually found small hopes to cling onto. Sometimes it was as simple yet stark as hoping I made it through the day. Sometimes there were bigger thing to hope for, sometimes the things remained small. Either way, I found that getting through life was much less of a chore if you had hope.
I had to force myself to remember this recently. I felt hopeless once again, like life was not offering me anything to look forward to or anything to rest my hopes on. That bleakness had returned and it scared me. I didn’t want to do this again. I didn’t want to live in limbo, wandering around my world in a daze, thinking there was nothing to live for, having several panic attacks a day about it. I forced myself to confront my emotions, to face my fears, and attack my despair from within. I forced myself to have hope.
My hope revolved at first around my loneliness. I hoped that in the future I would find someone to love again; even though I feel kind of soured on love right now I know that will change. As I found that hope, I reached for other forms of it. Just small things, like hoping the Islanders have a good season, hoping the weather cooperates on Halloween, those things were good enough to give me a kick start, to make me feel like I had things to look forward to, that the rough spot in my life was just an aberration and I’d get through it.
hope dangles on a string
like slow-spinning redemption
winding in and winding out
the shine of it has caught my eye
Let hope catch your eye. If it dangles before you, grab it. The world may seem bleak, you may have trials and tribulations in your life right now, but hope is all we have. Hope for the best, hope for love, for healing, for good fortune. Hope for good weather, for good health, for good days. Just have hope.