I hate hope.
There, I've said it.1
I hate the idea of hope, what Emily Dickinson called that thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all. Yeah, that thing. I cannot stand it.
And I know that I should like hope, right? I know that hope is biblical, probably, right? and it's just one of those things that's supposed to sustain our existence in some way and I should always be in support of that. I mean, hell, I have a quote tattooed on my arm that is ostensibly an argument for believing in the hope that is inherent in the human spirit. I would not make that argument, but you could. If you're a pansy who believes in such useless ideas as unfounded faith in eventual fruition of events that you can't bring to pass.
Ugh, sorry. I know that that's not what hope is supposed to be. Hope is supposed to something, I dunno, pure and genuine and real, something that you can cling to, something that, as Dickinson followed up, never asks a crumb of you. Hope is something you can have when you have absolutely nothing else going for you, something substantial that gets you through the day. I hear that.
It's just that I have such difficulty with that idea. Hope to me feels very passive, like, "Well, all we can do now is hope." And I acknowledge that there are situations in which yes, all you can do is hope, but that feeling of powerlessness that accompanies hope is what I always want to fight against. It seems that hope is your place of last resort, your solution when all else fails. I'd argue that if you're at the "hope" stage in life, there has to be another solution out there. I also acknowledge that this is probably because I've spent more time living in comic book movies and fiction than in living in the real world. In the real world, you come up against situations that rob you of power much more frequently than a comic book hero (a statement that I find surprisingly true).
Hope points out my insecurity. I'd rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic with the best of them, while the people performing the real profound service for humanity are the ones playing hymns as the vessel breaks apart. The damage is already done in this case. The damage control has already reached its limits. And in that moment, you can either choose to lean on something bigger than yourself or you can spend your last hours in a flurry of activity that idiomatically helps no one.
Then again, I don't care that my action doesn't have any results as long as I'm taking that action. I have spent so much of my life oscillating between action and inaction and I have found that because of my place and privilege in the world, action on my part is always better. Speaking out is always better. Taking a step is always better, even if it ends up being a step in the wrong direction. Waiting, hoping for something to occur is painful to me because it means that either I'm not taking advantage of my situation or I have been robbed of my advantages. I do not like either of those ideas.
I'm wiling to admit that there may be a trust or control issue here. I am not good at trusting other people to get a job done. Whenever I delegate a task, I have to very specifically stop myself from taking that task back for myself. I know how I want it done and, frankly, if I'm delegating the task in the first place, it means that I know that I can do it and do it well and that I believe it to be simple enough that someone else can do it for me. It is difficult for me to trust that they are going to do it as well as I can, but trust them I must. Believe me, if I had a Time Turner and could just repeat each day enough times so that I could complete all of my tasks on my own, I would. American Individualism at its best.
Which brings me back to hope. I think that there's an ethos in America where hope is something to be acted upon. You bring hope into fruition. The world is in our hands. We have the sometimes frightening ability to change things. And we should take advantage of that ability. We should act when acting is prudent, and sometimes we act even when it's not. That's what we do. In a country founded on a kind of idealism, on this belief that all men are created equal,2 we judge people based on their actions and not on their hopes or the hopes that have been laid out for them. The proof of your worth is what you've done, not what you've hoped to have done. Action is the language that we speak, maybe one that we deify.
On an absolutely personal level, the only arena in which I will allow myself to hope is that of human relationships. I hope that someone will be my friend, will look at me, will smile, will understand where I'm coming from, will think well of me, because I know that I can't really help in these situations. I can only try my hardest to present the best version of myself possible and then hope that the person sitting across from me sees some glimmer of value in me. There's a real abdication of causal ability there. And I hate that.
So while I hear that hope is helpful and hope is useful and hope is a comfort and hope pulls people through the situations that no human should ever really have to go through, I have difficulty accepting hope for myself. It's something that I know that I should work on. I know it.
But you must forgive me my bias. That thing with feathers has only ever let me down.
1 Not you, Hope. You're a phenomenal human being and I wish I had longer to work with you because you just seem like a trip and a half. Keep fighting the good fight, friend!
2 I know, I know, "All men" really meant all landed white males, but work with me here. We have expanded our definitions since the time of the Framers.
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