When I was a little girl, as early as I can remember, I began hoping Santa Clause would find me in good favor. I hoped and hoped he would come to our house on Christmas Eve and leave all the toys I requested in my letter. The one that I mailed to him at the North Pole. And without fail, Christmas morning would roll around. I’d run downstairs in high expectation. There, in the corner was our tree, all lit to the heavens, with all the packages stuffed underneath. My hopes had been answered. And I was happy.
Around that same age and era, when I was a little girl, I hoped for a dog. I wanted a little dog so badly. I cut out pictures and taped them in a notebook. I hoped and hoped that my parents would say “yes” the next time I asked. But every time, my hopes were dashed. And I was devastated.
Hope can do that to a person.
One way, or the other.
People have turned their backs on God because of hope. They had prayed. They had faith they prayers would be answered. It gave them hope that their wife or their kid would be spared from death. But, instead.
Hope can do that to a person.
Yesterday, I heard a story on the news. A three-year-old little girl was pulled from the rubble after 91 hours of being buried alive. An earthquake had flatted her city of Izmir, some four days earlier. And she was there. But they found her, miraculously. She was taken to a hospital, and early reports said she was well. The president of Turkey, when he learned of this event, said, “”Thank you God to give us new hope.”
I can’t imagine what that little girl must have been thinking for those 91 hours, buried in concrete and steel.
When someone has hope, they have a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.
It is said that humans need hope to survive. Those who advise on such things say that hope is a great necessity for us. It produces and sustains our will, our “enthusiasm” to live a meaningful life. A purposeful life, a fulfilling life.
On the flip side, there are Buddhist teachings that tell us that each moment is just there. Neither good nor bad, it just is. They advise against having hope because it goes against the reality that each moment is our fulfillment, whether that moment has us eating our favorite ice cream, or catching our hand on fire.
Ann Frank wrote a lot about hope, and she is always quoted on these things. She wrote this in her diary: “It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
And yet.
We all know what those really good people did to her.
I am writing this early Wednesday morning. I had a lot of hope on Tuesday night, for a lot of different things to happen. And as the hours passed, those hopes have been snuffed out, one by one.
Most days, here, I try to write some part of this in an uplifting way, a way to remind us of the greater good. But I’m not feeling so good right now.
I guess I can tell you this. I didn’t get a dog when I was a little girl. And. I wasn’t buried beneath rubble for four days, either. I thought about the one thing and not about the other. We don’t hope for things we don’t even entertain as thoughts.
Eventually, I got a dog. It happened in my 30th year. And I’ve had a dog ever since.
Make of this what you will, as I am still trying to figure it out.
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“Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect.”
― Margaret Mitchell
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“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
― Alexander Pope
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“Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Beatrice Letters
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And what should we make of hope?
