I’m writing this in an effort to reach out. I can’t think of any other reason why. Maybe it will help to put some things in writing, or maybe it will just end up confusing me (or you) further. Nevertheless, it’s the process not the outcome, isn’t it?
I always thought hope would be enough. I thought that if you had a dream you could put everything in motion and do your best to make it happen. If you could let yourself fall into something, it would work out, because you had the drive and passion and energy for it, therefore, it’s got to work, doesn’t it?!
I’ve had times in my life where that were the case - there was something that I wanted to accomplish and despite hard times, it happened, even if people around me thought it wouldn’t. Sometimes even I told myself it (whatever ‘it’ was) wasn’t going to work out but I managed to squash those thoughts and keep going - to favourable outcomes.
If I were going to let the rational part of my brain step in here, it would say, “But Vanessa, just because you want to invent a time traveling machine, and you have energy and a deep desire to do that, doesn’t mean that you can!” and I would have to agree…
And then Jacques Cousteau would step in and say to me: “If we were logical, the future would be bleak indeed. But we are more than logical. We are human beings, and we have faith and we have hope, and we can work.” And I’d say, thanks Jacques. You’re sweet.
So what do you tell the kid in Burma who’s parents have disappeared, how do you tell him that it’s going to be okay and he will live a happy, fulfilling life? How do you tell YOURSELF it’s going to be okay when you see someone close to you having a rough time of things - don’t you want to tell them not to lose sight of hope…? I mean, “Everything’s going to be okay”, right?
I’ve been thinking a lot about hope and resilience lately, mostly because I want to have those things for myself right now. Let’s just say, it’s been a really rough couple of months since I’ve been back. I should have bought stock in Kleenex before all of this happened. I was SO full of hope for the way things would be when I returned from New Zealand, but at the end of the day, my hope just wasn’t enough. So what was I missing? What didn’t I do? What could I have done differently? What went wrong? Why am I still here (geographically, emotionally)? Am I being hopeful, now, or just stubborn?
In Human, All Too Human, existential philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had this to say about hope:
Hope. Pandora brought the jar with the evils and opened it. It was the gods' gift to man, on the outside a beautiful, enticing gift, called the "lucky jar." Then all the evils, those lively, winged beings, flew out of it. Since that time, they roam around and do harm to men by day and night. One single evil had not yet slipped out of the jar. As Zeus had wished, Pandora slammed the top down and it remained inside. So now man has the lucky jar in his house forever and thinks the world of the treasure. It is at his service; he reaches for it when he fancies it. For he does not know that that jar which Pandora brought was the jar of evils, and he takes the remaining evil for the greatest worldly good--it is hope, for Zeus did not want man to throw his life away, no matter how much the other evils might torment him, but rather to go on letting himself be tormented anew. To that end, he gives man hope. In truth, it is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man's torment.
I’m not sure I agree entirely with ol’ Nietzshe on this one, but he does have a point. I guess sometimes it’s best to let go of something, rather than torture yourself with hope there to fuel the fire.
I consider myself, generally speaking, to be a pretty hopeful person. I’d like to think that things will improve; that the kids I can help in my classroom can grow up to be independent thinkers with an understanding that they can do anything they set their minds to, even if their parents are less than model citizens. I’d like to think that after an earthquake, or a tsunami, or whatever Mother Nature throws at us next, the survivors will band together and help each other and move forward stronger than they were before, with a renewed appreciation and respect for life, love, and the world around them. There are a lot of things I’d like to think, and I’d like to hope for. In fact, I could probably go on all day long raving about all the things I have hope for. And maybe you’d think I was a fool, or maybe you’d think about jumping on my bandwagon and having a hope-parade with me. There would be cupcakes.
Then I read an article about Hope in the NY Times. It said this:
People often display a remarkable ability to adapt to adversity, bouncing back to their usual levels of happiness despite extreme hardships. But people don’t always rebound, and scientists have long wondered what factors might account for the difference. In a talk at Harvard in September, a team of researchers suggested that one obstacle to emotional recovery, oddly enough, is hope — the belief that your current hardship is temporary.
Then it went on to say that the researchers found that, for example, people sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole adjust better to their situation than prisoners who retain the possibility of parole. Similarly, patients who underwent a permanent colostomy showed higher life satisfaction 6 months after the operation than those who underwent a potentially reversible colostomy.
Thankfully, I don’t have a life sentence or a colostomy to worry about at this point in my life. Knock on wood that I never do! But maybe there is something I can learn from them. Maybe, sometimes it’s important to give up. Maybe giving up (and only sometimes, because I would never ever ever EVER tell one of my students to give up, EVER - I guess this is a grown-up lesson) is the key to moving on and allowing yourself to heal and adjust to the new way, whatever that may be.
The question is, where is the new way? How do I get there? Do you have a map or a short-cut you could lend me? How 'bout I just hitch a ride with you?!
On that note, I’m going to leave you with some quotes I found about hope, because a good quote now and again is oddly comforting.
“He that lives upon hope will die fasting.”
~ Benjamin Franklin
“Hope makes for a good breakfast, but a poor supper.”
~ Francis Bacon
“Every area of trouble gives out a ray of hope; and the one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable.”
-John Fitzgerald Kennedy
“Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.”
-Martin Luther
