Hope

Somewhere along the way of my life, I began to be disdainful of hope.  I thought it was the flaccid (flak-sid), shrugging response of people who feel they have no power when confronted by a problematic situation.  "Oh well, nothing I can do about it.  Sure hope it gets better."  Hope felt to me like a mushy place to stand.

But I recently had an epiphany which gave me an entirely new way of looking at hope.  My siblings and I were talking about illnesses, and about how, if you live long enough, someone might very well discover the cure for what ails you.  And I realized that that is what hope is.

To hope isn't to pray.  It's not the belief in some intervening god.  To hope is being willing to believe that something you can't predict, can't be sure exists, may hold the seed of your salvation, no matter what problem you're grappling with.  Some genius is going to find the cure, the answer, the new technology, the new biology that will make the world a better place for more people.  No telling who it will be, when it will happen, if it will be the solution to your difficulty or someone else's.  But smart, committed people are working to solve the problems of the world (most of which we have created ourselves).  Hope remembers that she or he or they exist somewhere in space and time.  Hope doesn't solve your problem, but it makes the journey you're on a little less arduous.

I've never known what Emily D. meant when she called hope "that thing with feathers".  It's possible she was saying the same thing I'm saying now, only describing it more delicately, subtly, beautifully.  Or maybe she meant something else entirely.  It doesn't matter.  I finally know what I mean when I say "hope".