“Hope is the thing with feathers,” said Emily Dickinson.
That sounds nice. Beautiful and dainty and nice.
“And sings the tune without words,” she goes on. Yeah, I get that. You’ve got to have hope when you have no idea what will happen. I’ve been there.
“And sore must be the storm- that could abash the little bird.” Okay, hope is a tough bird. Persistent and enduring. Sounds good.
“Yet never in extremity- it asked a crumb of me,” ……… (record scratch) hold on now.
Hope asks nothing of us? Or at most, it asks a crumb? No offense, Em, but that hasn’t been my experience.
Hope is the thing that kicks my ass. It’s airy and intangible and magical, but as sure as the day follows night it asks much of me.
It’s one of the scariest of things to hope for something. Which makes it one of the bravest. Hoping for something is vulnerable. It means you might not get it, but you’re going to live like you will. It often means you want something you’ve never had before or you expect something that’s never happened before and the odds might not be in your favor. Believing that something good may happen is no small thing.
Hope often presents like the tiniest of flames, or a whisper from somewhere mysterious. Or as Ms. Dickinson suggests: a little bird in the midst of a storm. But make no mistake, hope isn’t a delicate little damsel of a thing.
It’s a warrior that keeps on fighting even though the battle looks lost. It’s a strict teacher that forces you to try again when you’re on the ground and crying. It looks you in the eye and says, “this isn’t the day we quit.” It doesn’t care how you feel or what happened in the past or how bleak the future looks, it says nonetheless, “Tomorrow will be better.”
It takes great courage and grit to have hope. It means you haven’t resigned yourself to whatever mediocre existence there is without it. It means you might not get what you’re hoping for, and yeah guess what, you’ll keep on going. It’s safer to not hope. It’s safer to decide maybe you don’t want that thing or a different life.
But if you decide that you do, if you decide that you’ll put your heart on the line and try hope instead of despair: you are the bravest of warriors, my friend.
You say, “I believe in a thing, and it makes me strong, not weak.” You’ve weighed your options and decided that this vulnerability is worth it. You might look silly and you might be misunderstood, but you’re going to hope anyway because it’s a better way to live, sometimes the only way.
And it probably won’t look like much. It might look like finally getting out of bed after 3 whole days. It might look like opening up a blank document one more time. It might be calling a friend or asking a question or simply showing up. That’s the thing about hope. That’s why we think it’s a feathery bird that won’t ask much. It’s sneaky and quiet and almost always acts when no one’s watching. So we underestimate it. We take it for granted.
But hope isn’t for everyone. It isn’t for the weak and it isn’t for cowards. It’s there for the taking for those willing to grasp onto it with white knuckles and go with no guarantees. It’s the thing that says, “don’t let go,” when you don’t know where you’re going.
It’ll pick you up and take you somewhere better. It’ll breathe life back into you and make you whole again. But make no mistake my friends, it will ask much of you. Hope is the thing with armor.
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