Hope

Day 16: Monday, April 27, 2020

What in the world is going on? I hear the news and think to myself, “How much worse can this get?” We hear of all kinds of non-profits and charities and even individual restaurateurs providing food for all kinds of needy people, juxtaposed against reports of long food bank lines and tons of food being thrown away because it can’t get to market. We hear officials say we have the best testing numbers in the world, juxtaposed against doctors who report that healthcare workers themselves cannot get tested. We hear that states are opening their economies again, juxtaposed against economic experts who are saying that the economy, no matter what we do, will not be able to bounce back in the next year. We hear a person report that the virus was as bad as she thought it would be, even though it was the worst thing she had every experienced,  juxtaposed against a story of a woman and son, both of whom succumbed to the virus within days of each other.

Meanwhile, most of us, living under stay-at-home orders, are just tired of the sameness of our four walls. We’re tired of close quarters where it is much more likely that we will get on each other’s nerves if we are living with others or where we are so lonely that we talk back to the tv if we live alone.. We’re tired of cooking all of our meals or ordering in. We’re tired of the incessant news of doom. We’re tired of social distancing, masks, washing our hands, and cleaning all surfaces. We’re all tired of our hair that is getting long and unkempt. We’re even tired of zoom, that connects us visually and audibly to others.

We long for our pre-pandemic lives. Will we even have those lives back? It seems unlikely. Our country seems to be in almost total disarray—we are so divided; we don’t believe the same things; we don’t have the same truths; we don’t have equal choices and chances; we don’t even agree on how to protect each other in this time of crisis. What in the world is going on? Besides thinking, “How much worse can this get?”, I am also thinking, “How much more of this can we stand?”

I’m re-reading the previous three paragraphs and considering how dark, how dismal, how hopeless they are. They paint a world that we do not wish to live in. Is there an alternative? Is there a way out? Is there, indeed, hope?  

Oh, there is always hope. As long as we have breath, we have hope, right? What choice do we have? If we don’t have hope, we die. Perhaps we don’t die physically, but we die in our spirits if we do not hope.

So we hope. How do we hope? We look for all of the slightest, smallest glimmer of good news. We’re happy to hear of COVID-19 patients who manage to get off ventilators and live. We are glad to hear that corporations have figured out how to get excess food to regular people who need it. We’re cheered when we hear that a hospital has enough PPE for all of its workers.

Perhaps more importantly, we hope through our actions in our everyday lives. We may do acts of kindness for neighbors, friends, family. We may give to charities and churches to help others. We may make a phone call to an acquaintance, just so that person can hear another human voice. We may celebrate the success of a new recipe tried and shared with family. We may read uplifting words in scripture or inspirational works or novels. We may pray. We may revel in the ever-growing sense that spring is here, the sun is giving us more warmth, and flowers and trees are celebrating their rebirth.

I have always been a person who weighs all the negatives that are possible in any situation. Once I have considered all those negatives, I can find the positives. Often, I end up having a much stronger opinion of the positive aspects than others around me who began with the positive aspects. For me, then, the negatives help me to hope in the positives. I can face all the negatives and know that they are not the whole story. The positives will follow. And that’s what I think about this situation in which we find ourselves. We don’t know when those positives will appear, but they will appear. It is a story of faith—resurrection follows crucifixion; life follows death; joy follows sorrow; gain follows loss.

We can stand this. We will make it through. We will live. We will thrive.