Hope is Thinking Your Own Joy Matters

I just watched Little Miss Sunshine. It's a fantastic movie. And it's all about hope. Ok. Love and hope. Both.

Do you remember hope?

I just started getting to know a really smart and wonderful man. He invents things. He does art. He knows people who make movies. He seems to still have hope.

Here's how I think about hope . . .

Hope shows up when you fearlessly make something just because it interests you and you don't second guess it and you don't tell yourself you are only being dumb and it will only turn out stupid and what the hell were you thinking.

Hope appears when you think something actually might change.

Hope encourages us to embrace that change.

Hope happens when you don't automatically distrust everything someone is saying.

Hope is when you try to learn and change and try and embrace and start something uncomfortable and step out into the light and see that you were all once in the cave.

Hope is thinking that your own joy matters.

I haven't had hope in years.

And I don't think I'm wrong. Not really. Not actually. Fundamentally and at the very base of my being, I don't have hope anymore. I wish I did. But I don't.

And every day, when I wake up and when I'm trying to sleep, I would like to think I might be wrong.

Here is this guy . . . who obviously has been around and seen . . . he's not naïve. He definitely has a DEEP edge that I haven't yet discovered. Very edgy. But he still has hope. How did he do that? He thinks art matters. He reads the New Yorker. He knows film makers. He invents things. He does interviews on Wisconsin Public Radio.

I think nothing matters and that all people will eventually disappoint you and that you can trust nothing because nothing is true. I think we spend our lives fighting and struggling against everything, hopefully we find a way to self medicate, and then eventually . . . we'll all die . . . alone. Thank God. So what does it matter? Why try? Why think and try and feel when all of it is for naught?

Yet, here is this man. Right in front of me. Fascinating the fuck out of me . . . because he's smart enough to see and STILL he manifests hope.

I gave him a Christmas card and he said it was beautiful. It was a little, white, pop-up house. And he was so taken with it, he called it beautiful.

Oh. Holy. Heavens.

Here is a man who can still see a pop-up house Christmas card as beautiful.

He still can be delighted by the little ingeniouses.

Oh. Holy. Heavens.

Could this he be real?

Could he still have seen, and continue to know . . . but still find hope?

Could the same be true for me?