Hope
I’ve been through a lot this year. Frankly, I’ve been through a lot all my life. I have suffered molestation, grown up without electricity or indoor plumbing, watched immediate relatives spiral into the pits of alcoholism and crack addiction, faced the daunting pre-teen task of talking my mother into lowering a loaded .45 from her head, and scared to the point of defeat
when she placed the same weapon against my own forehead five years later. In the last year alone, I watched the woman I have loved most in the world suffer physical, emotional, and psychological turmoil at the hands of a system that told her it couldn’t provide the health care she needed to get well, despite its prior ability to exacerbate her illnesses with risky procedures when simpler solutions were available and indeed called for – such is the nature of unbridled science in the name of progress. But I don’t blame the science. I don’t blame the drugs. I don’t blame the guns. I don’t blame the greed or the confusion or the hurt or the ambition or the pride or the need or any of the myriad circumstances that tie all individuals together as humans. I am inclined to believe these experiences, all, are nothing more than symptoms of the futility of existing consciously and presently. And then, somewhere beyond the hopelessness, I hope. None of this is to say I place no blame. I blame my mother for her choice to smoke cracks a way to escape her demons, or as a way to indulge them. I blame the doctor who told Ms. H that she might as well just get ready to die, and who refused to take reasonable steps to make sure
it happened no sooner than necessary. I blame the politician who tells a white lie in order to get himself elected long enough to do what good he believes he can do under the circumstances. I blame the ghetto youth who decides to forsake an education and deal drugs on the street simply because nobody handed him an excuse to do otherwise. I blame the family and friends who, out of frustration and hurt and pain, blamed me for the things I never did, and who blamed me for the
things I actually did, right or wrong. And I blame myself for my own mistakes – the ones I recognize and the ones I may never know – and for laying any blame in the first place. I blame each cynic who turns his back on possibility, citing probability instead. Blame is a very big gun aiming at a very small target. It’s hard to miss when you start firing blame. But I hope. I hope, not because there is no blame to be had, nor because there are no mistakes to be made, nor because everything is beautiful and bright and well with the world. I hope because there is nothing worth having without it. I hope because a world of blame is a world of extremes – a world of absolute rights and absolute wrongs that simply does not exist. I live in this world of grays along with the rest of you. I don’t have all the answers and neither do you, and it is only when one of us begins to believe he has an absolute answer that we begin to devolve into finger- pointing and name-calling and all that is unproductive and wrong with the world. So I continue to hope in spite of the blame, because, deep down, I am blaming not the individual nor the circumstance nor the ideal nor even the state of the world at large; I am blaming that infectious
need we seem to have to stop hoping because it’s less painful than doing so. I am blaming the numbness that puts any of us on this road in the first place. So call me out for the hypocrite that I am. I continue to hope that it doesn’t have to be that way, futile or not, and that is what has and will continue to set me apart. I hope.
when she placed the same weapon against my own forehead five years later. In the last year alone, I watched the woman I have loved most in the world suffer physical, emotional, and psychological turmoil at the hands of a system that told her it couldn’t provide the health care she needed to get well, despite its prior ability to exacerbate her illnesses with risky procedures when simpler solutions were available and indeed called for – such is the nature of unbridled science in the name of progress. But I don’t blame the science. I don’t blame the drugs. I don’t blame the guns. I don’t blame the greed or the confusion or the hurt or the ambition or the pride or the need or any of the myriad circumstances that tie all individuals together as humans. I am inclined to believe these experiences, all, are nothing more than symptoms of the futility of existing consciously and presently. And then, somewhere beyond the hopelessness, I hope. None of this is to say I place no blame. I blame my mother for her choice to smoke cracks a way to escape her demons, or as a way to indulge them. I blame the doctor who told Ms. H that she might as well just get ready to die, and who refused to take reasonable steps to make sure
it happened no sooner than necessary. I blame the politician who tells a white lie in order to get himself elected long enough to do what good he believes he can do under the circumstances. I blame the ghetto youth who decides to forsake an education and deal drugs on the street simply because nobody handed him an excuse to do otherwise. I blame the family and friends who, out of frustration and hurt and pain, blamed me for the things I never did, and who blamed me for the
things I actually did, right or wrong. And I blame myself for my own mistakes – the ones I recognize and the ones I may never know – and for laying any blame in the first place. I blame each cynic who turns his back on possibility, citing probability instead. Blame is a very big gun aiming at a very small target. It’s hard to miss when you start firing blame. But I hope. I hope, not because there is no blame to be had, nor because there are no mistakes to be made, nor because everything is beautiful and bright and well with the world. I hope because there is nothing worth having without it. I hope because a world of blame is a world of extremes – a world of absolute rights and absolute wrongs that simply does not exist. I live in this world of grays along with the rest of you. I don’t have all the answers and neither do you, and it is only when one of us begins to believe he has an absolute answer that we begin to devolve into finger- pointing and name-calling and all that is unproductive and wrong with the world. So I continue to hope in spite of the blame, because, deep down, I am blaming not the individual nor the circumstance nor the ideal nor even the state of the world at large; I am blaming that infectious
need we seem to have to stop hoping because it’s less painful than doing so. I am blaming the numbness that puts any of us on this road in the first place. So call me out for the hypocrite that I am. I continue to hope that it doesn’t have to be that way, futile or not, and that is what has and will continue to set me apart. I hope.