Hope Springs Eternal

The old proverb, ‘Hope springs eternal in the Human Breast,’ has been with us for so long, because it is human nature to find new ways to be optimistic. Especially when things seem dark and bleak in our lives. We may have been ill for a longer time than we expected, or a loved one has lost a job, or we watch out child go through a very difficult period. It is during these frustrating times that we search for other ways to see and understand what is happening. A good friend refers to these trials as ‘a little inconvenience’ in her life, and treats them as such. It is also during these times that we can easily assume the mantle of ‘victim’ and collapse into a sea of misery and blame, pulling down others in our despair, largely because, to use another old proverb, ‘misery loves company.’

The world has countless stories of suffering, difficulties, and tragedies. The stories themselves are lessons in ‘what went wrong’ in a particular case, but the ones that really resonate with us are of triumph in the face of disaster.  The stories of Anne Frank and her family hiding from the Nazi’s during World War II, or Olympian Louis Zamperini captured and tortured in the Pacific by the Japanese. Anne Frank’s story did not end with a triumph, but the story resonates still due to the hope kept by she and her family that they would ultimately be able to escape the horrors of the concentration camps that interred so many other in Europe. Zamperini was,indeed, finally liberated, coming home to the USA very broken and disillusioned. It was his journey from that low point, to becoming an inspiration and a role model that keeps us fascinated by his transformation. And at the base of both of these stories is hope, that tiny thing that makes troubling times a little less difficult, simply by creating a story that ends well, if only in your mind, while you’re enduring these trials.

Hope takes so many forms it would be impossible to try and list them with anything resembling a final list. Hope can be the plan of ‘if I just keep doing my best, working to improve, things will get better.’ Hope can also mean ‘we’ve done everything we can think of to help this, and just need to keep going until it gets better.’ Hope can also go into wishing or praying for some new inspiration to manifest to improve things. Or of a ‘guardian angel’ to help us out. These last two may sound like fantasy, but sometimes putting the thoughts out there into the Universe can make a difference: something or someone comes along and helps us see our plight in a different way that changes how we think about it. Of the Food Bank—supplying children with weekend backpacks of food to help them and their families with food insecurity—finding themselves with empty cupboards on Friday morning, only to have a high school senior deliver them 2,000 pounds of food on Friday afternoon: his Senior Project dedicated to helping Food Insecurity in his area.

Hope invites wishes, and prayers, and thoughts of unexpected help to get us through tough times. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. It is then that we begin to realize what we are capable of enduring, and that we will get through our troubles if we keep our heads up, looking upward and outward, and just keep going.