Choose Hope!!!

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul…” - Emily Dickinson

 

The packages have been opened and the leftovers are gone. The house – so full of life and noise only a couple of days ago - is quiet again. The end of Christmas always makes me a little bit sad. So much time spent getting ready and such anticipation - then it’s over in what feels like an instant – a wonderful precious instant – but an instant nonetheless. That’s why I leave the tree up for far too long and take the decorations down gradually – it’s a way to let the shadow of Christmas linger and brighten up some of these gloomy January nights.

 

Each year I get an incredibly upbeat Christmas letter from an old friend who uses a lot of exclamation marks. This year the theme of her letter was, “We choose Hope!!!!!” - she used the phrase in almost every paragraph. This woman is, and always has been, one of the most rabidly positive and optimistic people I know, so the tone of her letter was not a surprise. But, something about the phrase she used so often and so enthusiastically struck me. Can “Hope!!!!” be a choice we make? Can it actually be the anchoring emotion for the New Year?

 

For years hope eluded me, but as time goes on, it takes more and more energy to be bleak and less and less energy to see there is a bright side. One of the rituals that always makes me feel hopeful is filing away of the old calendar and the filling in of the new one. There is something so optimistic about those blank calendar pages stretching into the year ahead… and something so cleansing about throwing those old calendar pages away.

 

As I flip through the old year, transferring birthdays and anniversaries to the year ahead, I reflect on the events and details, trips, adventures and memories those old pages contain. I savor the passing of time, saying a prayer of thanks for all the good things that happened and licking my wounds one last time over the bad things that also occurred. I’m not an optimist, so I always say an extra prayer of thanks for yet another year I had more to be thankful for than wounds to lick. This ritual of sitting down with the fresh calendar and looking forward to the year ahead is one of the few times hope reigns in my heart, so you can see why it is so special to me.

 

This year a lot of bad things happened to friends and family. There have been infant deaths and sudden deaths and child cancer; a young mother died unexpectedly; one friend lost four members of her family. Two vibrant lively women who lived nearly a century have recently fallen ill and are now about to die. One friend remains out of work, for the fourth year in a row; one of our most beloved canine companions died…And, yet hope remains.   

 

The young couple who lost the babies has been well-cradled by their friends and so they continue to get out of bed every day and even occasionally laugh. The young mother’s infant child is being amply cared for by her family and by all reports is “a happy baby who never cries.” My friend who lost her sister suddenly rescued a fine dog to keep her company. The woman who

lost so many family members continues to take care of the rest of her family tirelessly; the grandmother of the child with cancer continues on with fervor, patience and grace even though her last spark of energy has long been spent.

 

Those vibrant, now passing women had great faith and will soon be reunited with their long-passed husbands…My unemployed friend’s husband just found a job…And, just today, a funny looking dog with a hard history, a big head and a huge heart found her forever home in our family…Life goes on, so much of it, in spite of the tears, lived so optimistically.  

 

So, yes, this year I choose hope and with no guarantee of outcome, I will make hope my anchor emotion every day.  Who knows, maybe 2015 is the year that hope turns into “Hope!!!” for me. Christmas 2014 may be over, but as all of us “old” folks know, it’ll be Christmas 2015 before we know it. Happy New Year!