WHAT WOULD THE HOPE LADY DO?

I might never have had a blog if they hadn’t started calling me The Hope Lady.  As far as I knew, blogs were for teen-agers and politicians on the campaign trail.  Besides, I’ve never been a journal keeper. 

 

My journaling history is a saga of failure, several journals begun, none growing larger than three entries before abandonment.  I had the idea that a journal ought to contain personal secrets and could not bear the thought of my secrets from any particular day being discovered.  There is safety in knowing you can change your secrets, and you can change them, so long as you haven’t put them in writing.   What’s more, I never could get very interested in writing anything that wasn’t going to be read by anyone. 

 

The Hope lady is a title others gave to me, not one I would have chosen for myself.  I am definitely no Mother Theresa.  But when you work for a centre for hope studies, and you talk about hope day after day, year after year, to people who may, or may not be able to remember your name, some of them are bound to refer to you as The Hope Lady.  Some days it feels like a good fit.  Other days, when the world is violent and the news is discouraging, and the drinking water has turned to acid rain and the bird feeder swarms with noisy magpies, and the computer has frozen and the kitchen tap is dripping, and the stock market is sliding while the only stock we ever sold is rising, and my favourite clients are suicidal and some professional journal editor has rejected the writing that kept me awake for six days—well—those are the days when it seems that there are actually two of us, The Hope Lady and The Real Me. 

 

The Real Me howls and wrings her hands.  She blames the politicians and pollutes the water.  She angrily turns off the radio and unplugs the computer because you can’t always turn it off when it’s frozen.  She curses the forces that shape the stock market and vows never again to buy birdseed.  She says something rude to the plumber’s receptionist and promises to rip up the editor’s comments.  But that will have to wait until the computer starts working again, because she has not printed them yet.  The Real Me is not the person who should receive a telephone solicitation from a charity, or a request to volunteer.  She is not the one who should be summoned to comfort the suicidal clients.  The task of being a good person on a bad day is delegated in full to The Hope Lady. 

 

The Hope Lady is no Mother Theresa, but she can do some surprising things.  She can write a little, and has wiped out 53 years of unsuccessful journaling with a blog faithfully kept for eleven weeks.  She feels no pressure to reveal secrets because it is a public journal, and no pressure to make it perfect because she already knows it will have few readers.  Nevertheless, she is purposeful in its writing, because somebody just might read it.  Grounded firmly in the world of The Real Me, she sets out to notice what The Hope Lady ought to notice, to give voice to the things The Hope Lady ought to write.  Surprisingly, her writing has received the stamp of approval from The Real Me.

 

And what has The Hope Lady noticed in the past eleven weeks?  The joy of a blind woman who can read the newspaper and the triumph of important issues in research; the comb concerts that celebrate racial progress in Selma Alabama and the gripping power of American civil war stories to make us work for peace; the pheasant at the bird feeder, feasting on the grain the magpies have spilled; the young people who learned to control their behavior, grew up nicely, shared their food with hungry strangers, interrupted their rushing journeys to help people in need; the old people, remembered with love and wonder; the cat getting a bird’s eye view from atop the piano; the proud accordion player coming out of the closet at last; the left wing, public health care supporting Albertans who were so totally welcomed in red-neck Tennessee.  She has written about hope-opotamuses, dogs with a secret past, unexpected roses, long-time half-empty vessels that filled to bursting in only a moment. 

 

There it is, this imperfect blog; out there in the universe where anybody might accidentally stumble upon it.  It is the foundation of evidence for hope that keeps the two of us on track on the worst of days.  It is the old chest we route in when we need to find hope.  It is the weight of reassurance that steadies our anchor when The Hope Lady and The Real Me venture into the world inhabited by suicidal clients. 

 

What would The Hope Lady do that The Real Me wouldn’t?  Even on the worst days she would look around to see if she could notice any hope.  And if she could summon the words to describe what she found, she would record it in a blog.