Hope

“To live without Hope is to Cease to live”

Is there a difference between hope, false hope, and no hope?

I think that if hope means to “wish for a particular event that one considers possible”, then all hope is hope and there is no such thing as false or no hope.

A couple years before my mom passed away, she had a moderate stroke that limited her ability to do many things. One of those things was driving. If you knew my mom, you knew that she was a restless, independent woman that needed to be on the go. Losing the freedom to hop in the car and drive, for her, was one of the worst things that could happen.

So, what did she do? She hoped she would drive again. Not only did she hope, but she tried.

With a friend, she would ambulate with her walker and navigate herself into the driver’s seat of her car and just sit. After doing this a few times, she progressed to driving about 100 feet to the end of her apartment complex’s parking lot. The more she tried the more she hoped to be on the road again. Her optimism grew the enthusiasm she had for the other parts of her life. The doctor and others thought my mom was a fool to think she would drive again; she had false hope.

She never did drive on the streets again, but the “false” hope she had, gave her life a spark it would not have had if she simply thought she would never drive again.

My brother passed away this past August after a four-year battle with stage 4 cancer. He survived those four years, in part because of treatments, but in larger part because of his hope. He hoped for things that seemed to me to be unrealistic. And at the very end of his life, when he knew better than anyone else that he would not survive his illness, when there was “no” hope, he traded his Earthly hopes for the hope of meeting God his Father. He was so full of faith that he inspired and spread more love in his last few days alive in his hospital bed than some spread in their entire lifetime. He had a parade of staff and visitors, from all phases of his life, come to say goodbye and offer him comfort, but instead left feeling comforted by him and his faith.

Hope gives us something to live for, to look forward to. And, although many times I’m left thinking someone has false hope or their situation is hopeless, I also remember that I don’t know better than the hopeful one. Actually, I have a lot of nerve to think I know better than them or dare say something that would attempt to take away their hope. Just because I don’t believe something, doesn’t mean it’s impossible or never will be true. In many circumstances, hope needs to be combined with action. But sometimes hope is all you have.

And why not hope? Let’s hope, let’s dream, and when we can, let’s take action to make this world a better place – in whatever capacity available.

“We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.” Dr. Martin Luther King