GROWING HOPE ON FALLOW LAND

Growing hope is my hope. Why? Because I like hopeful people.

They do things I might try to do, go places I might like to go.

In my work life I choose hope. Family life? I choose hope.

Here’s now to grow hope in what feels like barren land.

First, recognize hope for what it is:

“This is such a fine time. I hope it never ends.”

The other side of hope:

“This is so awful. I hope it ends fast.”

Growing hope adds to resiliency and endurance.

Once you’ve been through a few things it all starts to make sense.

However, too many fire-breathers and truth-bomb lobbers act like they’ve never been through things, like they never will.

Isn’t that special?

Growing Hope After Cancer

Starting with personal strength of will, we move past hard times.

While no one wishes cancer on anyone, and if they do they don’t know what they’re doing, going through it is a hope exercise.

Feel like working out on chemo and radiation? Cancer doesn’t care. It’s got one job: to kill you.

You were warned about nausea, bought the nausea meds, but they make you sicker than chemo?

Then what?

You endure, that’s what. Take what’s been offered to kill cancer and hope it doesn’t take you out, too. Or at least take the best of who you used to be.

Does that ever happen? All the time.

Dance the dance with cancer and you might turn into a cure-cancer advocate.

Or, you might try to forget about it and go along your way.

There’s no steadfast rule to follow, except do whatever it takes to survive.

Are we good so far? Cancer survival is based on growing hope, as in hoping you won’t die from the disease, or the cure.

Here’s what going through cancer doesn’t do:

It doesn’t give you a license to say cancer is a fake disease doctors diagnose to make more money for themselves and Big Pharma.

It doesn’t give you authority to spew arcane remedies for a disease that comes in many varieties and locations.

If you start talking cancer nonsense to the wrong people you may find one who knows how to communicate how stupid you sound without the inflamed rhetoric usually attached to outrage.

So, maybe skip the bullshit?

Growing Hope On The Family Tree

I’m old enough to have held many babies.

That’s not unusual for baby boomers, though. People have kids, then kids have kids.

If you’re a part of an extended family you’ve held nieces and nephews, sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters.

Am I missing anyone? Sisters and brothers. Some of us have held them, too.

Over the years life gets bigger, then smaller.

One day you’re the big boss with people answering phones and making appointments for you.

You are scheduled, over schedules, and all you feel is the love of being someone, being needed.

The next day it’s over.

No calls, no appointments, and it feels like you disappeared.

What’s it feel like to disappear? Ask a middle-aged woman.

Many of these women were well traveled and involved in several “extracurricular” activities. And yet, several of these lovely women stated, “I feel invisible!”

Why? All their answers were the same, “Because I no longer ‘look’ young.”

I remember the day so clearly. I remember every one of their stories. I remember how I felt listening to them describe their inner feelings. I was stunned that my girlfriends felt invisible. I saw them as very visible. The word invisible upset me.

Babies I’ve held are reaching middle-age. You get that if you’re lucky.

I got out of my disappearing act for them, and it’s one of the best things I’ve done.

How did I disappear? I thought I was minding my own business, not being negligent at keeping in touch.

Imagine my surprise. I was okay being invisible, but no one is really invisible. Right?

So I did the right thing. Did I find joy? Yes I did, pride and joy.

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I was so bursting with pride and joy that my heart grew a new chamber. For that I spent the night in the local ICU.

The deal I made with myself was to make amends to clear the road.

I cleared the road, but one hurdle remained, one question: How did I become the bad guy?

The simple question of being wrong affected my equilibrium, my emotions?

After twenty-four hours of forced reflection with a parade of nurses coming and going, my feelings got better.

Because I flopped out and flopped back didn’t give me the right to point fingers, accuse, or assign blame.

A lesser man goes for the triple crown of crap by pointing, accusing, and blaming. That’s not me and it shouldn’t be you unless you’re a punk, then that’s all you’ve got.

If you need a refresher of what a punk looks like pointing, accusing, and blaming, turn on Fox News.

Strangers Needing Hope?

I grew up small town and expected the rest of the world would share my small town notions about life and how to live it.

So I rolled out to take a look around. What I saw has stuck with me.

If the rest or the world were strangers to my small town, I was a stranger to the world when I left.

I saw strangers hitchhiking interstate freeways from Oregon to Iowa, and back.

I saw strangers on buses crossing the country from NYC to PDX.

Strangers milled around airports waiting for planes to Europe.

What struck me and lasted were my bus rides to work in Philadelphia. I lived in Center City and rode out to Oregon Avenue in South Philly.

At different times of year the people living in row houses used the sidewalk out front as their yard, their beach, their club.

That was their way of life, not mine, but I saw hope.

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I saw people mixing together in a neighborly way, sharing, laughing, hugging.

But it was still a sidewalk in the middle of a major metro area.

Were the people on my bus route growing hope? Or just going through the motions of living life?

What did I care? In those days I was a young man looking to pay the cheapest rent possible. The neighborhoods I passed looked better than where I lived.

But I knew the difference because of where I was raised.

Would the world be a better place if it were more like North Bend, Oregon?

Yes, it would, and that’s worth voting for.

If nothing else, we have the chance of growing hope for the young by voting in candidates unafraid of addressing the boogeymen and women in the room, the election deniers, the deniers who say they aren’t deniers.

Is every election perfect? No.

Every phone call? No.

And anyone claiming perfection is pulling your chain for their amusement.

Don’t be a toy doll, be an American who knows what hope is, and how to grow it.

Vote your empathy, your compassion, then your wallet.

Older voters? Give the kids a chance. Vote democrat.

Younger voters? Show your elders you understand how the world works. Vote democrat.

The rest of you? Do the same. You’re not invisible. Show it.