I Hope So

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A few weeks back on This American Life they did a story about a kid's book called "Nobody's Family is Going to Change".  My initial thought was that the book must be written to comfort kids who were worried about significant life changes like births and deaths or divorce, so I was confused when Ira kept describing it as ominous.  Turns out, it is a book that tries to get kids to accept that the reality of life is that some people (ie: your family) are just always going to be horrible, and there's no use hoping things will ever get better.  I thought that was a really sad thing to be teaching your kid.

Kids are given many gifts; like the ability to learn  languages quickly, or the ability to notice minute details the rest of us gloss over--and hope is certainly one of them.  Their ability to hope purely and fully is priceless.  It adds joy and magic to life (which can also be re-phrased as: "purpose" and "meaning", as movies like Miracle on 34th street have so aptly explained).  I mourn those children who let go of this early because of tragic circumstances in their lives; and I have to pity the adult who has had their own hopes ripped from them so bitterly that they want to take this gift from their own children in an attempt to protect them from their inevitable disillusion.

Reality hits all of us hard at times, but I always want to return to hope.  It's a happier place, and a more meaningful one.  I know some people see it as juvenile--as though people who hope are simply not strong enough to accept reality.  But I assert that anyone who has ever struggled to hope in the face of overwhelming opinion or evidence to the contrary in an effort to fight for something better rather than succumb, knows that it is easier to give in to "reality", but nobler to fight for something better. Hope is not futile simply because it is not always--or not yet--fruitful.  "Hope" as a state of being is almost an end unto itself.

I usually overlook "hope" when I consider the triad of qualities I've been taught are the most important to have.  Next to daunting "Faith" and "Charity" it sometimes seems too easy.  But I've been thinking about it a lot today.  A lot of the troubles I've had in my life are the result of choices I make out of despair; out of a lack of hope that I won't always be faced with a choice between enduring the un-endurable and the easy way out.  

Haven't we all thought Romeo was crazy for believing too soon and too completely, the news of Juliet's death?  Couldn't he have had the decency to at least hit the first stage on the list of stages of mourning (denial)?  Can't I have the hope to hold me through this one moment of agonizing no-answers-and-no-end-in-sight to the next one where the pathway opens up?

I hope so.

"I believe that God is able to make a way, where there is no way." - Alex Boyer