Hope

Hope is the creep lurking in corners pretending to be a gift, a curse hiding in blessing’s clothes.
It’s the eternal spring that gives Mr. Wrong his 100th chance. Hope is the 3rd year intern who won’t call it, the ‘compassionate care’ trial that tortures the dying.

Hope is the healthy “Subscribe and Save” snack subscription. It’s the compost pile created when it’s too late to cancel the 2nd delivery. It’s answering an unknown phone number without the expectation that the caller wants to discuss my car’s soon-to-expire warranty.

Hope is the frenemy that motivates me to open a newspaper and say “hello” to a stranger. It’s the stabbing pain in my heart when I dare to listen to a new politician or community organizer only to hear the same old, unworkable notions.

Hope is fuel. It’s the drive to open another blank document. It is the cursed creep that compels me to write and rewrite. Day after laptop-bound day. It’s the impetuous to inform myself. To turn the page yet again – in the belief that humanity is redeemable, and that our stories are not just dystopic visions. It is triumph over expectations; the often-unfounded faith that past performance is not an indicator of future results. Hope was at the bottom of the box because if it had been at the top, Pandora wouldn’t have had the incentive to dig through pestilence, poverty and the panoply of other human pain.

Hope is our tether to humanity. Sometimes, hope is all we have. And often, that’s enough.