Hope: Best to Have It
Someone recently asked me these two questions: What motivates you to blog? When do you blog? Here’s my answer: I blog often, usually moved by something that I read or hear about. Or, I blog about something that happens in my life, whether good or bad.
For me, fingers to the keyboard are a way of processing what occurs in our complicated world. So, when I read something or reflect on something that seems to hit some chord, I write. When someone I encounter, whether a stranger or a named person, acts well or badly, I blog. Rarely, but on occasion, people ask me to stop writing about them (although I never write about private people with their names). To these folks I say: “Then stop doing things that cause me to write.” And when they say: we can identify who is in your blog posts, I answer: “If the shoe fits ….” Or I say: “Stop reading what I write; I don’t force anyone to read my oeuvres.”
Here’s a recent example of something striking a chord. And, thus a new blog!
RICHARD COHEN: REMEMBERING
I just read that Richard Cohen, the husband of Meredith Vieira, passed away after a long set of illnesses. He had been diagnosed with MS early in life, something he shared with his then to-be wife (Meredith) shortly after they started dating. It was a disease, the outcomes of which are unknown; it could progress slowly and with few symptoms or fast with many effects or something inbetween. (Apparently she responded: “And I could be hit by a bus tomorrow” to message that life is filled with unknowns.)
I have not read Cohen’s memoir, although I perhaps will. Seems like a good read. But, I was struck by a quote he gave to a journalist in 2018, long after his illnesses progressed and his children were grown: “I want to have a long-term relationship with hope.”
What a powerful line from which we can all learn. Whether we are struggling with illness or other of life’s exigencies or we are wrestling with the conundrums that current politics present for and to us or we are trying to understand human behavior or we are dealing with folks who, whether consciously or not, cross our boundaries or stretch our capacities to deal with them with empathy, hope is a good quality to have.
In a new book I co-authored with Edward K.S. Wang titled Mending Education (TCPress 2024), we focus on the power of hope in the educational context following a crisis, in this case the Pandemic. In our book, we are drawn to the work of Jane Goodall; she’s a person with enduring hope for our world. And, we conclude that hope for the future of and improvement in our education system and those within it is key to our capacity to move forward effectively.
And the extant literature on trauma remediation and recovery from illness supports the idea that hope, howsoever and wheresoever we find it, is one key strategy for moving forward. And, even if illnesses do not disappear and trauma can only be ameliorated (it doesn’t disappear), hope is a quality, a process, a feeling, a belief system that matters tremendously. Those with hope do better, feel better and experience a better outcome than those without hope.
So, all you complainers out there, all those who regularly lament their lot in life and the happenings in their lives, it would serve you well to shift your focus and to find the pathway toward hope. Indeed, for those of us who have struggled mightily with life’s many hurdles, hope is better than medicine. Actually, it is a medicine we would be wise to imbibe. “Have hope” is a common expression, often uttered but not always internalized. Long story short: hope matters and it is good for us.
So, my advice is this: internalize hope. Make it part of your diet. Live it. Believe it. Surely, it is one thing we know we are better with it than without it. For sure. For real.
Richard Cohen’s desire and message is spot-on. And as the real story goes, he outlived expectations, including as the end of his life drew near.
