Hope is the thing

There’s a poem by Emily Dickinson that I love called "‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers." I considered opening this blog post with it, but then thought it might just freak you out to be bombarded with random nineteenth century poetry without warning. If you’d like to read it, I did post it at the end :o).

This poem begins to run through my head whenever the concept of hope is introduced into my day. It captures the buoyancy of hope, the floating, flying feeling that we get when we allow it to sustain us.

It sounds cheesy saying so out loud, but in many ways, hope is so like a little bird that flutters in our spirits and keeps us floating when life looks bleak. I dare say that hope is more accessible than faith, because it lives in you regardless of belief.

For someone like me, who’s part Vulcan and entirely too cerebral, hope is like a delicious basket of fresh baked bread when you’re on the Atkins diet: all wrong but oh, oh, oh so right!

Hope is ridiculous. It is illogical. It is unfounded and unlikely. Still, hope is beautiful in its irony.

So why is it that the hopeful sometimes find themselves getting screwed so hard? This is the question that has rattled around in my head since last night. That’s when I learned that a friend of mine’s relationship is not likely to float, despite all the hope in the world.

Sure, we could analyze what she did wrong – the times she zigged when she should have zagged – but in the end, her crime was hoping and that just sucks big, hairy man tail.

Don’t we hear stories of unlikely successes that result in happy endings all the time? Hope, ridiculous, illogical, unfounded, unlikely, dumbass hope is rewarded every day. So why do some of us crap out when we attempt to be players in the hope game?

I don’t know, but it hurts me to be on (or close to) the losing team. When I’m on this end, I am sobered into remembering that I love logic. I like the equations that make life simple: hard work + perseverance + ambition = success.

Ah, now that’s a world that sounds comfy.

Unfortunately, it’s not the world in which we live. Our world is topsy turvy, unpredictable and often blaringly unfair, but what can you do except hope for the best?

‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson

"Hope" is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the Gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land

And on the strangest Sea

Yet never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.