Hope floats

April 11, 2009

Hope is one of those words that gets overused: “I hope it doesn’t rain today,” or “I hope all this laundry fits into one load,” or “I hope I make the green light.”  I probably use the word ‘hope’ at least once a day, without even thinking.

I have lots of quotes and verses posted near my computer.  Sometimes when I’m feeling uninspired I sit at my desk and soak up the wisdom in the words. 

Thoreau’s “Live the life you have imagined,” and Eleanor Roosevelt’s “You must do the thing you think you cannot do,” are a few of my favorites.  And of course, the lyrics to my favorite song, Amazing Grace.

There is one underlying theme to all these passages that bring me peace and inspiration:  Hope.  I could take down all the others and replace them with that one single word.

One of my favorite quotes, which I don’t have posted near my computer but I should, is the title theme for the movie Hope Floats: “…just give hope a chance to float up. And it will.”  

Being hopeful is different than being optimistic.  Optimism is a scientific study in positive thinking.  It is a way of looking at the world, a philosophy.  An optimist thinks things generally turn out for the best, a ‘glass is half-full’ sort of mentality. 

Optimism is good, but hope is better.  Hope is an emotion, like love and joy.  

Hope is an act of faith.  It is looking into the unknown and believing that no matter how bleak the situation appears, things are going to turn around.  To be hopeful, you must suspend your need for answers and just believe that things will be okay.

Hope is an act of courage.  It is the opposite of fear.  Hope is the single most life-sustaining quality for anyone facing any sort of adversity. 

The darkest time in my life was not when disappointments showered like rain and I was forced to react.  It was the months leading up to it, when I’d resigned myself to a life without hope of things ever changing. 

I ache for anyone who has ever experienced, even for the briefest moment, a feeling of total hopelessness.

It is a hopeful time of year, in a year in which we are in serious need of hope.  The media is filled with bad news: recession, unemployment, desperation, fear. 

Webster’s defines hope as, “…desire accompanied by expectation.”   It seems that we all share the desire for things to change, but all the bad news lowers our expectations.  Every time we start to feel a glimmer of hope, more bad news arrives to cast doubt and create fear.

We need spring, rejuvenation, resurrection.  Perhaps in this time of year when things return to life, we’ll find the hope necessary to battle all the doom and gloom. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all.”

This weekend, my hope is that we find hope in more than the day-to-day routines of laundry and weather and traffic lights.  My hope is that we will have the courage to believe that everything truly will be okay.  And it will.

This article first appeared in the Lewistown News-Argus and the Sidney (Mont.) Herald on April 11, 2009.