What is Hope?
by Mary Beth Sammon
What is hope?
These days it seems as if there is so much bad news that so many people I know are feeling pummeled, frightened and pretty much hopeless.
Honestly, I'm left speechless in their presence. What can we say when someone has lost his or her job? Or has been given a horrific medical prognosis? When a parent dies? I don't know. "It's going to be okay? " Or that it totally sucks what they are going through, but it's all good?"
People it seems are worried sick.
And, yet, I listen. I transform into my Wailing Wall motif and hope that they can get it out and let it go, and move on from our conversations at Starbucks and move out of their black hole and find....
Hope. I hope they find hope. But I don't really know what that is, except I know hope exists. I know in the core of my being that there is always hope. We always need to keep moving forward toward the glimmers of light, even if we look or feel unsteady like toddlers taking their first steps. We need to keep going and believing that we will find our way out of hard times and grace will move us to safety again.
I know that.
And that is why I keep looking for "Hope" signs as a lifeline.
Last night I was honored to be invited to The Les Turner ALS Foundation's "Hope Through Caring" dinner dance (www.lesturnerals.org). Anyone, who is probably everyone, who has read Tuesdays With Morrie, doesn't need me to explain here the ravages of this progressive, neuromuscular disorder that causes muscle weakness; impaired speaking, swallowing and breathing; and typically has a death sentence two years out after diagnosis. Those who live longer, often live lives locked inside their own bodies. If ever there is a group of people who need hope and grace to step in, it is ALS patients.
And, yet, last night, in my quest to put a definition on hope, and to understand why I believe at the root of my being that there is always always hope. I saw many signs.
-Doctors and researchers at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, who in conversations by the auction table discuss individual patients - their eyes and faces alight in smiles as they regale the resiliency, the fight to survive and thrive they witness daily in people whose only hope is hope, hope that these folks in the laboratories will find a cure for this cure-less infliction
-Doctors who say they can't help but cross professional boundaries because they care so deeply for those in their care.
-Family members of those who wage war with ALS or have lost loved ones. They were there to carry on the hope so that others can have hope in the battle against ALS.
-The patients, some who came from across the country - tethered to wheelchairs and fed in feeding tubes by their caregivers, decked out a la The Oscars, who lovingly create bring help and caring everyday.
What is hope? Last night, again and again, I heard people say, "We're here because we care."
For now, for today, I'll hang on to this definition... that in part hope exists because there are people who care.
"Perhaps everything terrible is, in its deepest being, something that needs our love." - Rainer Maria Rilke
In these times when the world around us seems so scary, and friends and family we meet daily, carry worry like a cancer, the message of hope is that we don't have to live it alone.
There is hope, if we are there for each other. There is hope if we care.
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