CHARGING THE HOPE TOOLS

If you are going to do hope work with others, I tell the CBC lady, if you are going to use hope tools and get them to work, I tell the CBC lady, you have to stay grounded. You have to know where to find your own hope when you need it. And though it may seem trite, may seem just too simple and shallow to say that I find my hope in family, in music, in flowers, in having fun with ideas, in the people I meet when I am working, this is where my hope recharges itself. Maybe hope tools are like cordless power tools. They definitely exist, but they don’t do much when they aren’t charged.

In the mail there’s a letter from Natalie. The letter is filled with news to charge the tools. She’s doing really well, been working a long time now, in spite of being sick. The important people in her life have stayed the course with her. “I am looking forward to my future,” she says. Now here is a statement we could not possibly have imagined her making a few years ago.

“I still go through fluctuations of depression,” she says, “…nothing paralyzing like when I saw you…but sometimes I just wish it would just go away…any chance depression
Will suddenly disappear??!!? Ha ha!”

And this is the nub of hope work! It is impossible, it seems, to explain it to funding providers and media reporters, but this is the clear and undeniable request for hope. . And the Haha is the escape hatch, considerately provided in case I cannot support the hope. This is the challenge, the moment when I make the choice between hope work and something else. This is the moment when I search for wisdom and suddenly remember that a newsman named Francis Pharcellus Church once wrote “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!” The world didn’t end when he said it. He wasn’t sued for making false promises.

I could go on for pages about the physical ailmants that have assaulted Natalie, her brushes with death, her times in a wheelchair, months and months in bed. I could research the correlation between depression and her physical condition to see if it is extreme, or just very high. And if I told you about her past, you would have trouble believing that she is looking forward to her future. You would have trouble saying something hopeful, and so would I.

So, with Virginia and all the people who loved the newsman in mind, I turn back to Natalie’s letter. “if you ever want anything…anything at all…don’t hesitate to pick up your phone,” she says. She is promising to be there for me. How better could she prove to me that she is looking forward to her future? and because she is, who am I to say anything but “Yes, Natalie. That depression might just disappear!”