This happens, all writers experience this. Sometimes words appear out of nowhere and insist on being on the page.
The conversation in my head went like this:
I never sign anything love and hope.
Don't cross off hope. You can't. That would feel awful, like killing a flower.
The little word is a message.
Is it true?
Do I really feel hope?
My answer was, it feels more like an endangered species. It needed protection.
End of conversation in my head.
But once that word jumped on the page it was ringing in my ears everywhere I turned.
It was insisting on getting my attention.
I started to feel responsible for hope.
I had several friends become very ill recently. And one thing I noticed was how much each of them were inhaling and exhaling hope. They were looking at life threatening illness with hope.
Their hopefulness was so large, I too was breathing in all the hopefulness just being around them. It made me wonder where has hope been?
What exactly was dimming my own hope?
Everything I ever did started with a flicker of hope. I have always leaned toward optimism. Infused with it. Rose colored glasses and all.
But something was affecting my hope.
As I sat wondering what it was, I realized how much my own light of hope had dimmed over how people stuck in the experience of migration were being treated all around the world. I had been horrified by the way families and children who crossed the US border were treated. Family separations, holding the children in cages, and now child deaths was just hammering on my hope.
The indifference of so many "leaders" at so much suffering and people fleeing horrible situations with no place to go. Homeless. Without a country. What is wrong with us that our boundaries lack compassion?
Boundaries without compassion was sucking the hope out of me.
I visited a friend in the hospital.
I felt the strength of her hope.
My friends who were very ill were reminding me that hope was needed, hope could not be dimmed or abandoned or forced into exile or extinction.
There are no boundaries around hope.
I have some work to do with hope. I can't tell you exactly what that is right now. I just have a sense that hope has lots of assignments for me.
I'll be looking for hope, sharing hope, sharing stories of hope, and bringing hope where I can.
Wishing you all the hope you need in 2019.
May hope defeat hate.
Love and hope,
Sarri
