Hope

I’ve been working on this post for days, and started and restarted it several times. Here’s one of my many false starts:

The key word of this past presidential campaign was hope. I heard it every day. It’s a word with special significance for me, living with a chronic illness for which there is currently no cure. There are so many things to hope for.

Well, that one didn’t quite work for me. Maybe it’s the title that’s throwing me off. Because sometimes it’s just plain impossible to feel hopeful. I know that there are the cynics out there, the ones who think that those of us who use the word hope, who choose to do our best to live our lives with hope in the forefront, are silly at best, delusional at worst. Who are happy to point out all the ways that hope is irrational, or at least stupid, and are happy to point out all the evidence that “proves” that hope is an illusion. Look at the starving children, look at all the ways that we treat each other so poorly. Poorly being too kind. Disease, poverty, famine, disasters. Of course I could go on and on. And on.

But what I want to make clear is that hope isn’t an easy choice. And it is a choice, because I am not naïve, I know how much easier it would be for me to throw up my hands and say, “yep, you are right.” And right now, that is the direction I am leaning. I feel it tug at me, hell it’s way more than a tug, give in, that siren voice calls, life won’t get better, this is the best it will ever be. There will always be wars and we will always choose self-interest over doing what is “right,” choose “gimme, gimme” over looking out for our neighbor, because who’s to say what “right” is anyway? The bankers and the big businesses will always win. The House always wins. How do we know that that isn’t the way it is supposed to be anyway? I’ll look out for me first, and if I get enough, well then any “extra” good stuff will “trickle down” to you. To them. They aren’t really like us anyway. They won’t appreciate it, they are “different” from us and deserve their lot.

And I also know that those who opt for cynicism, well, this makes it even more tempting, because their job is much easier than mine. Because really, what kind of commitment does it take to be cynical? From my side of the fence it looks pretty damn easy. All those folks have to do is sit back and when things go poorly, when things fall apart, or when we see examples of man’s willingness to harm others, what is required of the cynic? Nothing more than a smug look and an “I told you so.”

So I’ve been stewing in this for days and tonight didn’t help. Long story short, my “ex-cat” died tonight, while my nearly-ex was out of town for the holiday. And while this was certainly not the biggest tragedy in the world, it kind of felt like it tonight. The siren’s voice was getting louder and louder. But a phone call later, a friend, Debi, CEO of Vox Pop, and fellow cat person, and former EMT, was here to take care of it. I just got a call from her, “you can rest easy, he’s at rest” in her back yard, next to her cat. What does this say about hope? Well I’m not really sure, but it says something about friends and friendship, and for now, for tonight, that seems like enough to turn the siren’s voice off, or at least to put it on mute.

Rest in peace Spike.