When it comes to thinking, there may possibly be no better aid, no more effective facilitator than the water exercise belt. It’s a simple technology really, simple but brilliant. There’s a piece of foam rubber to go around your back, a belt to tighten through it, and a buckle for the belt. Once you’re in it you can move in deep water without having to worry about whether your head will go under. Relieved of that concern, standing upright with your legs free to move without attention to where you are stepping, your mind is at liberty to wander.
This morning my mind wandered off into territory usually occupied by my buddy and colleague Lenora, the territory of possible selves. This is familiar territory for her. She works primarily with kids, helping them imagine hopeful possibilities for their future selves. This morning it felt natural for me to be there, seeing as how I was floating along, maybe being noticed by strangers who, humorously and impossibly, might be thinking of me as a jock, an exercise fanatic. Yes, I know it’s unlikely. But still it’s possible. Strangers, after all, know so little about your history. They know only the self they see, and the me these strangers see is out in a bathing suit around 7:00 AM. You can’t really blame them if they’ve misunderstood, can you?
Having wandered there, my thoughts continued on until they came to the work that is coming up for me, a trip to Vancouver, an evening with the parents of children with severe disabilities. A funny thing happened in the planning of this event. It was organized by the staff of Sunny Hill Health Centre. They planned a parents’ evening on hope and advertised it. To their surprise they began to get a very enthusiastic registration, not only from the parents for whom the evening was planned, but also from the parents of grown children with severe disabilities. Once a parent, always a parent—as far as hope is concerned.
Hope, where parents are concerned, shrinks itself down from the rosy future picture to the present reality. I’ve heard it said—and thought more than once myself—that the earth’s population would likely die out altogether if parents at the prenatal stage were fully informed about the challenges they were taking on. Anticipating the birth of our children we imagine, without really knowing we are imagining it, laughing with bubble-blowing babies, glowing over honour-role graduates, bragging to our fellow seniors about our compassionate care-giving children, there to help us in our old age. We imagine a blissful state of loving parenthood with ourselves at the centre of wisdom. It is a future anyone would covet.
Though few parents are awarded the luxury of such a reality, none are more challenged to rise to the task of becoming possible selves than the parents of children with severe disabilities. Without warning or preparation they are called upon to be so many things they never intended to be—loyal defenders, advocates, brave and cheerful accepters, special educators, medical experts, managers of staff—all possible, but not hoped for, not hoped for at first anyway. Later—prodded by an urgent necessity--they hope to be all these things, and they work toward that hope. The age at which a dependent child becomes a dependent adult is not a magic age. This, perhaps, explains how it happened that so many of the registrants at the hope session for parents are not the parents of children, but rather the parents of adults.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
EXCUSES
To those of you who, like me, remain slack-jawed with amazemen at my having made it into the pool at the Y before work on 10 consecutive business days including 2 Fridays when I didn’t have to be at the office, I beg you not to worry. The world isn’t ending. There are always logical explanations to account for unexpected events. Here are my top ten.
10 Nobody objects when I practice the alto parts of choir anthems while I water-jog
9 Sometimes I am the only person in the pool (possible explanation for reason 10)
8 The Y is directly on the route between home and the office
7 You can access the lRT from the y without going outside (excellent on wet-hair-days)
6 The pool staff are nice to me
5 Nobody asks me for anything when I’m there
4 The water feels warm when you put the first toe in
3 The water still feels warm when you put your stomach in
2 The shower is warm when you get out of the pool
AND THE NUMBER 1 GOOD REASON WHY I HAVE BEEN IN THE POOL BEFORE WORK ON 10 CONSECUTIVE BUSINESS DAYS IS …
1 I haven’t been able to think of a good excuse to skip.
10 Nobody objects when I practice the alto parts of choir anthems while I water-jog
9 Sometimes I am the only person in the pool (possible explanation for reason 10)
8 The Y is directly on the route between home and the office
7 You can access the lRT from the y without going outside (excellent on wet-hair-days)
6 The pool staff are nice to me
5 Nobody asks me for anything when I’m there
4 The water feels warm when you put the first toe in
3 The water still feels warm when you put your stomach in
2 The shower is warm when you get out of the pool
AND THE NUMBER 1 GOOD REASON WHY I HAVE BEEN IN THE POOL BEFORE WORK ON 10 CONSECUTIVE BUSINESS DAYS IS …
1 I haven’t been able to think of a good excuse to skip.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
KEYBOARD, WASHBOARD AND THE AMAZING ANGELA LLOYD
Blame it all on inspiration, or wild imagination, or good leadership, or hero worship, or even delusions of grandeur. But 8 days after the fact—having invested about $25.00 on a washboard, a leather strap, 2 old-fashioned clothes pegs, 3 metal spoons, 2 plastic spoons and a kazoo—I think I can probably say definitively that I may not have needed any of it, except possibly the kazoo. In fact—unlike many other people--I actually had a washboard in the laundry room, and a hundred pegs in the peg bucket (albeit they are the new-fangled kind with springs instead of slits and dapper round heads), and a few dozen metal spoons in the spoon drawer, and 3 plastic spoons in another drawer, and my old washboard never once considered having a fancy leather strap, and when I play the comb some people say it sounds to them like a kazoo. Still I did invest about $25.00 in all these things, which now lie in a pile on my dresser, waiting, like jewellery, to be shown off.
Maybe I wouldn’t have bought any of it if it hadn’t been for the fact that last summer I spent $400.00 on a used keyboard which drove me to hysteria and occupied way too much of my free time until, just a month ago, I heard David say, “I think that keyboard was a really good investment.” If I could make a good investment with $400.00, what might I be able to do with $25.00?
And I likely would not have bought any of it, or even ever considered it had I not sat spellbound in the audience at the Timpanogos Festival in Orem, Utah while
Angela Lloyd
hypnotized me with her gentle stories and then delighted me with her washboard antics. So I traded my plans to hear more stories for an hour’s worth of washboard workshop with Angela, and you really can’t go to a washboard workshop without a washboard, can you? And really, if it hadn’t been for the store having such a run on washboard accessories, I would also have bought at least one wooden block, and possibly a bell, and undoubtedly a little tooting horn. Likely I would have spent more than $30.00 adding in all that. So you see, I really got quite a bargain, as it turns out. What I didn’t get, was the skill, the forty million hours of instruction, the 28 years of practice or the ultimate talent that would transform me from the musician I am not, to the musician Angela is. Only in my dreams am I permitted to make all those bits and pieces burst into beautiful music the way Angela does. She said it was easy. Next time I’ll take promises like that with a tablespoon of salt!
When you get right down to it, the reality is more perplexing than the appearance when it comes to playing the washboard with the wooden pegs, and there’s got to be some sort of technique of magic that converts a mixing spoon to a percussive wonder.
So far, about 6 days in—I didn’t get home until very late on Sunday—I’ve mastered the kazoo, using the amazing band-aid trick Angela taught me, and the fancy strap has been temporarily affixed to the washboard with a couple of sewing pins.
Now I must say, all things considered, that every day, as I turn away from the dresser and toward the keyboard--that keyboard is looking more and more like a really good investment!
Maybe I wouldn’t have bought any of it if it hadn’t been for the fact that last summer I spent $400.00 on a used keyboard which drove me to hysteria and occupied way too much of my free time until, just a month ago, I heard David say, “I think that keyboard was a really good investment.” If I could make a good investment with $400.00, what might I be able to do with $25.00?
And I likely would not have bought any of it, or even ever considered it had I not sat spellbound in the audience at the Timpanogos Festival in Orem, Utah while
Angela Lloyd
hypnotized me with her gentle stories and then delighted me with her washboard antics. So I traded my plans to hear more stories for an hour’s worth of washboard workshop with Angela, and you really can’t go to a washboard workshop without a washboard, can you? And really, if it hadn’t been for the store having such a run on washboard accessories, I would also have bought at least one wooden block, and possibly a bell, and undoubtedly a little tooting horn. Likely I would have spent more than $30.00 adding in all that. So you see, I really got quite a bargain, as it turns out. What I didn’t get, was the skill, the forty million hours of instruction, the 28 years of practice or the ultimate talent that would transform me from the musician I am not, to the musician Angela is. Only in my dreams am I permitted to make all those bits and pieces burst into beautiful music the way Angela does. She said it was easy. Next time I’ll take promises like that with a tablespoon of salt!
When you get right down to it, the reality is more perplexing than the appearance when it comes to playing the washboard with the wooden pegs, and there’s got to be some sort of technique of magic that converts a mixing spoon to a percussive wonder.
So far, about 6 days in—I didn’t get home until very late on Sunday—I’ve mastered the kazoo, using the amazing band-aid trick Angela taught me, and the fancy strap has been temporarily affixed to the washboard with a couple of sewing pins.
Now I must say, all things considered, that every day, as I turn away from the dresser and toward the keyboard--that keyboard is looking more and more like a really good investment!
Friday, September 11, 2009
EXPECTATIONS
Every September the storytellers of Utah launch a fantastic summer event, the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival. This year it was our great pleasure to attend.
We certainly got our money’s worth. They had invited a dozen national tellers, professionals who make their living telling stories. No wonder we loved it. The national tellers are all pretty good. We’ve learned to love them. For the most part they come complete with long southern drawls and a gift for exaggeration.
The southern tellers pull you into their lives, into their history, into their landscape. Go to a festival in Tennessee or Texas, and you’ll feel like you’ve been to Tennessee and Texas, also, North Carolina, Kentucky, Georgia. You come home with a sense that you have rested in the bosom of the people, become part of them somehow.
The Timpanogos Festival is surprisingly similar to the festival in Jonesborough Tennessee. It is huge—ten thousand visitors, maybe more. The programs are housed in enormous tents and on a marvellous hill under the stars. The festival goes on for several days, multiple choices every 90 minutes. When you first arrive you wonder what to choose. Later you realize it doesn’t really matter what you choose, because any story those tellers tell is likely to be wonderful.
There was music. There was audience participation. Sitting in tents and on the hill under the stars we feasted on words, gorged ourselves on laughter. We heard about North Carolina, Georgia, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee! No doubt about it, we came home happy and well entertained.
But wait a minute! We weren’t in the south. We were in Utah. I’d almost forgotten where we were. Curiously, we did not hear a single story about Utah or its people, and that, in a place where the local storytellers have the organizational structure to put on such a large and well-managed event, strikes me as very surprising. To be fair, the brochure didn’t promise any local tellers or any local stories. I guess I just expected them. It’s funny how you can have an expectation without knowing you have it.
We certainly got our money’s worth. They had invited a dozen national tellers, professionals who make their living telling stories. No wonder we loved it. The national tellers are all pretty good. We’ve learned to love them. For the most part they come complete with long southern drawls and a gift for exaggeration.
The southern tellers pull you into their lives, into their history, into their landscape. Go to a festival in Tennessee or Texas, and you’ll feel like you’ve been to Tennessee and Texas, also, North Carolina, Kentucky, Georgia. You come home with a sense that you have rested in the bosom of the people, become part of them somehow.
The Timpanogos Festival is surprisingly similar to the festival in Jonesborough Tennessee. It is huge—ten thousand visitors, maybe more. The programs are housed in enormous tents and on a marvellous hill under the stars. The festival goes on for several days, multiple choices every 90 minutes. When you first arrive you wonder what to choose. Later you realize it doesn’t really matter what you choose, because any story those tellers tell is likely to be wonderful.
There was music. There was audience participation. Sitting in tents and on the hill under the stars we feasted on words, gorged ourselves on laughter. We heard about North Carolina, Georgia, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee! No doubt about it, we came home happy and well entertained.
But wait a minute! We weren’t in the south. We were in Utah. I’d almost forgotten where we were. Curiously, we did not hear a single story about Utah or its people, and that, in a place where the local storytellers have the organizational structure to put on such a large and well-managed event, strikes me as very surprising. To be fair, the brochure didn’t promise any local tellers or any local stories. I guess I just expected them. It’s funny how you can have an expectation without knowing you have it.
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
SUSPICION
The world is full of interesting jobs. Imagine, for example, the life of a customs agent, opening suitcases, examining unmatched socks, waylaying wads of used underwear on their way to the laundry. Whose suitcase would you want to look in? How would you determine which of those travelers are suspicious enough to warrant further investigation?
“Where were you, ma'am?”
“Salt Lake City?”
“How long were you there?”
“Six days.”
“Business or pleasure?”
“Pleasure.”
“What did you buy?”
“A washboard made by the Columbus Company (especially for lingerie), 2 wooden clothes pegs (knobby tips, no springs), 2 plastic spoons, 3 metal spoons, 1 strap and a kazoo.
“Anything else?”
“Five bags of candy.”
“Anything else?”
“Two copies of one small book.”
“Total value?”
“$77.00.”
And there lies the mystery of it all. Given that he didn’t even bat an eyelash, what would it take to make a customs agent suspicious enough to want to thumb through my laundry?
“Where were you, ma'am?”
“Salt Lake City?”
“How long were you there?”
“Six days.”
“Business or pleasure?”
“Pleasure.”
“What did you buy?”
“A washboard made by the Columbus Company (especially for lingerie), 2 wooden clothes pegs (knobby tips, no springs), 2 plastic spoons, 3 metal spoons, 1 strap and a kazoo.
“Anything else?”
“Five bags of candy.”
“Anything else?”
“Two copies of one small book.”
“Total value?”
“$77.00.”
And there lies the mystery of it all. Given that he didn’t even bat an eyelash, what would it take to make a customs agent suspicious enough to want to thumb through my laundry?
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
NOTHING LESS THAN ...
Who knows what forces will suffice to drive a human being forward under adverse conditions in the quest for personal betterment?
Will intrinsic motivation be enough? Maybe not.
Will spousal support and encouragement be enough? Maybe not.
Will bragging rights be enough? Maybe not.
But just in case a person might be too proud to quit after bragging …
Let it be entered into the public record that on this first day after Labour Day, this first day of the post-summer routine, I, (okay, admittedly David was there taking every step alongside me to keep me going) in the true spirit of hope and future intentions, left my bed at 4:30 AM, made the uphill trek to downtown, joined the YMCA, and did an hour’s worth of water aerobics before coming to work. And if, upon reading this, you are doubled over, seized beyond breathing by convulsions of laughter or disbelieving amazement, let it be a matter of public record that nobody could possibly be more surprised to report this than I.
But it really happened.
To do it once was a stretch.
To do it again is almost a certainty. .
To do it AS often as intended will require …
Nothing les than A MIRACLE!!!!!
Will intrinsic motivation be enough? Maybe not.
Will spousal support and encouragement be enough? Maybe not.
Will bragging rights be enough? Maybe not.
But just in case a person might be too proud to quit after bragging …
Let it be entered into the public record that on this first day after Labour Day, this first day of the post-summer routine, I, (okay, admittedly David was there taking every step alongside me to keep me going) in the true spirit of hope and future intentions, left my bed at 4:30 AM, made the uphill trek to downtown, joined the YMCA, and did an hour’s worth of water aerobics before coming to work. And if, upon reading this, you are doubled over, seized beyond breathing by convulsions of laughter or disbelieving amazement, let it be a matter of public record that nobody could possibly be more surprised to report this than I.
But it really happened.
To do it once was a stretch.
To do it again is almost a certainty. .
To do it AS often as intended will require …
Nothing les than A MIRACLE!!!!!
Thursday, August 27, 2009
CALLING ON HOPE
Troubled people call on hope,
Thinking nothing short of magic can help them now.
They say: ”I am the sum of my experience.”
Hope says: ”Yes, that plus your hopes for the future.”
They say: ”What if I don’t have any hopes for the future?”
Hope says: ”Then we’ll find some.”
They say: ”Where will we find them if no hopes are there?”
Hope says: “We’ll find them in your past experience added to the past experience of others, added to the future you haven’t explored yet.”
”Past experience has tied you in knots,” says Hope. ”Hold on to me as we work at the loosening.”
Then they, with surprising frequency, say: ”Okay.”
And before they have time to think about it, they are working the knots, making room for hope to perform the magic.
Thinking nothing short of magic can help them now.
They say: ”I am the sum of my experience.”
Hope says: ”Yes, that plus your hopes for the future.”
They say: ”What if I don’t have any hopes for the future?”
Hope says: ”Then we’ll find some.”
They say: ”Where will we find them if no hopes are there?”
Hope says: “We’ll find them in your past experience added to the past experience of others, added to the future you haven’t explored yet.”
”Past experience has tied you in knots,” says Hope. ”Hold on to me as we work at the loosening.”
Then they, with surprising frequency, say: ”Okay.”
And before they have time to think about it, they are working the knots, making room for hope to perform the magic.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
SUMMER OF BUGS
Let us pause to remember a summer of bugs.
The veranda sheltered two colonies of wasps.
The tomatoes are feeding an army of slugs.
Moths and grasshoppers came in to the house for a visit.
Box elder bug scouts are signaling the onslaught of more,
While match-ups and weddings and a new babe arrival
Give proof that the love bug is nesting.
The veranda sheltered two colonies of wasps.
The tomatoes are feeding an army of slugs.
Moths and grasshoppers came in to the house for a visit.
Box elder bug scouts are signaling the onslaught of more,
While match-ups and weddings and a new babe arrival
Give proof that the love bug is nesting.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
OLD BARNS AND THE TALE OF THE SENIORS MENU
Jane sent me a story by email
OLD BARNS, OLD PEOPLE AND OLD FRIENDS
Though it was new to me, I had a hunch that this one had probably already found fertile growing space on the internet. Something about the hopeful tone of the story tipped me off. It was a safe hunch. I was right, and, try as I might—I spent more than two full minutes reading almost identical versions of the same story--I didn’t find the name of its original author. What I think I can say for sure is that whoever wrote it hoped to inspire. If repetition is any indicator—and it probably is, given the contagious nature of such things--that hope appears to have been achieved.
Jane and I have been talking lately about old people. It all started at lunch, when we discovered that all six of us assembled around the table were eligible to order off the seniors’ menu.
“”Seniors Grilled Cheese with a fruit cup,”” said one, when the waitress came by to take the order.
“”Seniors Chicken,”” said another.
“”Seniors omelet,”” said the next one.
When my turn came I also ordered the grilled cheese. “”Seniors Grilled Cheese,”” I said loudly. I ordered it slowly to give the waitress time to focus, trying desperately to project a sneaky look, a broad hint that I might have something to hide. In reality I had nothing to hide, except that deep inside me burned a faint but persistent hope that the waitress, upon hearing my order, would ask for government ID to prove my age. Instead, she asked if I wanted the grilled cheese on white, brown or sourdough.
Struggling with the fact that my order would go unchallenged, I focused on the task of contenting myself with the thrill of the discount, and that warm feeling of being in the company of good people. Jane and I were, to my mind, in a mixed group. Some of us are retired, some of us are not. Some of us are grandparents. Some of us are not. Some of us live in seniors’ accommodation, while others moved to a large two-story house not so long ago. The age span in the group, from oldest to youngest, is 37 years—one generation in our family, two generations in some others. That covers a lot of territory on the demographic map, and here we were, a one-category group in solidarity, ordering from the seniors’ menu.
The way I see it, the whole process of aging is a hotbed of uncertainty. We might be carefree, or encumbered with pain. We might be respected, yet can also expect—when we least expect it—to be disregarded. We might bask in a life of plenty or—possibly given economic unpredictability—find ourselves living on a tight budget. So I ask you, is it any wonder, then, that a story about the beauty and regenerative value of old barns and old people should have made it to the big time, snatched up and spread in epidemic proportion by millions who hope to be of value for a long, long time, and—in anticipation of a lengthy journey—fortify themselves with a seniors’ discount?
OLD BARNS, OLD PEOPLE AND OLD FRIENDS
Though it was new to me, I had a hunch that this one had probably already found fertile growing space on the internet. Something about the hopeful tone of the story tipped me off. It was a safe hunch. I was right, and, try as I might—I spent more than two full minutes reading almost identical versions of the same story--I didn’t find the name of its original author. What I think I can say for sure is that whoever wrote it hoped to inspire. If repetition is any indicator—and it probably is, given the contagious nature of such things--that hope appears to have been achieved.
Jane and I have been talking lately about old people. It all started at lunch, when we discovered that all six of us assembled around the table were eligible to order off the seniors’ menu.
“”Seniors Grilled Cheese with a fruit cup,”” said one, when the waitress came by to take the order.
“”Seniors Chicken,”” said another.
“”Seniors omelet,”” said the next one.
When my turn came I also ordered the grilled cheese. “”Seniors Grilled Cheese,”” I said loudly. I ordered it slowly to give the waitress time to focus, trying desperately to project a sneaky look, a broad hint that I might have something to hide. In reality I had nothing to hide, except that deep inside me burned a faint but persistent hope that the waitress, upon hearing my order, would ask for government ID to prove my age. Instead, she asked if I wanted the grilled cheese on white, brown or sourdough.
Struggling with the fact that my order would go unchallenged, I focused on the task of contenting myself with the thrill of the discount, and that warm feeling of being in the company of good people. Jane and I were, to my mind, in a mixed group. Some of us are retired, some of us are not. Some of us are grandparents. Some of us are not. Some of us live in seniors’ accommodation, while others moved to a large two-story house not so long ago. The age span in the group, from oldest to youngest, is 37 years—one generation in our family, two generations in some others. That covers a lot of territory on the demographic map, and here we were, a one-category group in solidarity, ordering from the seniors’ menu.
The way I see it, the whole process of aging is a hotbed of uncertainty. We might be carefree, or encumbered with pain. We might be respected, yet can also expect—when we least expect it—to be disregarded. We might bask in a life of plenty or—possibly given economic unpredictability—find ourselves living on a tight budget. So I ask you, is it any wonder, then, that a story about the beauty and regenerative value of old barns and old people should have made it to the big time, snatched up and spread in epidemic proportion by millions who hope to be of value for a long, long time, and—in anticipation of a lengthy journey—fortify themselves with a seniors’ discount?
Monday, August 24, 2009
HOPE-SETTING
Hope-setting. It’s one of the things I enjoy most in the daily grind of counselling. It’s inspiring. It’s surprising. It’s mind-expanding. It gets things off to a comfortable start and focuses the work toward the future. I like it, and the files don’t lie. I really am better at it than I ever was at goal-setting.
When I think of how easy it is to organize a counselling relationship around the hopes of a client I just can’t believe that everybody doesn’t do it. I’ve been looking at hope counselling files this summer. As I look at each file I see a group of clearly documented hopes. “I hope to feel more joy and less anger.” “I hope to do things that make me proud.” ”I hope to find satisfaction in my marriage.” These are the hopes on which the work of future sessions is founded.
Hope-setting. It’s a simple process on the surface of it. You sit down with a client, have a chat, and ask for sentences that begin with I hope. Then you write them down for present discussion and future reference. When I say the process of hope-setting is easy, I guess I don’t mean REALLY EASY. Like anything worth doing, it takes a pint of commitment on the counsellor’s part, and a quart of discipline to keep doing it until it feels natural. People are skeptical when you first begin.
“Oh, I don’t think I can do that,” they say. Between us hangs the unspoken fear. If the fear could speak it would say,”My problem is so big that it’s beyond hope.” But when you press for hopes, big or small, realistic or not, you eventually get hopes.
When I say that the process of hope-setting is easy, I really mean that it is easier for me than the process of goal-setting. This is evidenced by the files which show that I do get to hopes, reliably so, and early in the process. My record on goal-setting was not as good. Looking back, I can see how I got into trouble. When I was a fledgling counsellor, intent on learning how to do it properly, I applauded the authors and teachers who advised me to set goals and objectives early in the process. I am, after all, a practical woman, and how can you expect to accomplish something if you haven’t agreed on the thing you want to accomplish? So I would set up an objective-setting conversation.
Me: ”I would like to set some objectives for our work together. It will be easier for us to get things done if we both know what we’re trying to do.”
Them: “Okay.”
Me (the you-first approach): “What would you like to accomplish?”
Them: ”I want to deal with my anger,” or ”I want to increase my sense of self-worth,” or—and this one is a real stinker—”I can’t think of anything we can accomplish unless my wife is willing to sleep with me.”
Let’s face it. Future-focussed though I wanted to be, I found that I really wasn’t very good at goal-setting. I wanted to do it early in the counselling process, and I couldn’t get it to feel right. I wasn’t exactly sure how to deal with anger, and I didn’t feel I could promised to increase anybody’s sense of self-worth. As for getting a wife to sleep with an unhappy husband, well, the best I could do was change the subject. Vowing to set goals it later, I’d wander off in other directions, only to find that once you start exploring the conversational caves, losing yourself for hours in the tunnels and blind alleys, it’s generally easier to abandon the idea of goal-setting entirely. When it came time to impress professors with student papers I’d look back at my files, desperate to find one where goals had been documented and achieved. Ultimately I’d end up disappointing myself by basing my papers on files where no clear goals had been set.
Imagine my relief when I found there was a future-focused alternative! Rather than goals, I could work with hopes. There are a few factors that make hope-setting easier and more desirable than goal-setting. You can get hopes earlier than you can get goals. What’s more, you can get more of them, and as you are getting them, you only have to hope for them. You don’t have to promise to achieve them.
There are, when you think about it, some basic and important differences between hopes and goals. Hope is an emotion, while goal is a thing. Counselling is emotional work. That is why so many people come to us seeking a cure for anger, an injection of self-worth, an antidote for unhappiness. Goals by their nature—so concrete, so tangible, so objectively measurable—have a hard time finding a comfortable place to flourish in counselling, where the talk tends to be about emotions. It is easier to start with emotions in counselling that it is to start with things.
Hopes relate to wishes, while goals relate to intention. This basic difference permits us to have more hopes than goals. We can hope to visit India some day and enjoy a flutter of pleasant feeling as we say it. But if our goal is to visit India, then we are more apt to say we plan to visit India. Once we’ve said that, we have to start working on it. This makes it easier to have India as a hope rather than a goal. It is easier to wish than to plan. Keeping the future in mind, you can set hopes sooner than you can set goals.
Hopes are imaginative while goals are action-oriented. This important difference shows itself most clearly when we get down to the work of nurturing hopes and goals. When we nurture hopes, we delve into the imagination, try to make it bigger, strive to expand the number of future possibilities. When we nurture goals, our focus is on achievement. We try to be realistic. We narrow the field of possibilities based on a concept of realism. Given the tools available to us at the early stages of a counselling relationship, combined with our limited knowledge about what is realistic for this person, it is easier to nurture the imagination than to nurture commitment to action.
One additional factor makes hope-setting a better first choice than goal-setting. Hopes prefer to take their place ahead of goals. They like to be leaers. When you express hope by saying I hope, you are pairing a feeling with a future possibility and the way you feel tends to influence the way you act. . In fact, it is best to feel hope first if you’ll need to invest a lot of energy on the hard work of achieving a goal. What kind of fool would document a goal and commit to checking on its progress without any hope of achieving it?
When I look at the hopes jotted down on the early pages of a hundred files I see that they are bigger than goals, softer than goals. Emotional and imaginative, they point toward a desirable future not entirely in the control of the hoper. In one file I read: ”I hope to be respected, not just treated as one more case file.” The hoper, as I recall was not talking directly about the relationship that was developing between him and me, but I do recall how it set the tone for the way I thought of him, the way I spoke to him. He had so many obstacles to deal with, so many decisions to make. What he hoped for was to be respected as he stumbled along the journey.
In another file I read: “I am hoping to get a job where I can be happy. ”I am hoping to get a job where I can contribute something. I am hoping to get a job where I can have positive input into situations. I am hoping to get a job where I can stay for a long time. I am hoping to get a job where I will be safe from the possibility of injury.” These hopes, I recall, were the hopes of a man who was not looking for a job at the time, and would not be in a position to do so in the near future. He had, in fact, been sent to me so that he could ”deal with his anger.” By the time I met him I was no longer worried about dealing with anger. I told him we’d get to it eventually. First, though, I was wondering if he had any hopes he’d like to share. And that’s how he got to telling me about his hopes for his next job, which is what led us on a journey of imagination, and gave us the imspiration we needed.
When I think of how easy it is to organize a counselling relationship around the hopes of a client I just can’t believe that everybody doesn’t do it. I’ve been looking at hope counselling files this summer. As I look at each file I see a group of clearly documented hopes. “I hope to feel more joy and less anger.” “I hope to do things that make me proud.” ”I hope to find satisfaction in my marriage.” These are the hopes on which the work of future sessions is founded.
Hope-setting. It’s a simple process on the surface of it. You sit down with a client, have a chat, and ask for sentences that begin with I hope. Then you write them down for present discussion and future reference. When I say the process of hope-setting is easy, I guess I don’t mean REALLY EASY. Like anything worth doing, it takes a pint of commitment on the counsellor’s part, and a quart of discipline to keep doing it until it feels natural. People are skeptical when you first begin.
“Oh, I don’t think I can do that,” they say. Between us hangs the unspoken fear. If the fear could speak it would say,”My problem is so big that it’s beyond hope.” But when you press for hopes, big or small, realistic or not, you eventually get hopes.
When I say that the process of hope-setting is easy, I really mean that it is easier for me than the process of goal-setting. This is evidenced by the files which show that I do get to hopes, reliably so, and early in the process. My record on goal-setting was not as good. Looking back, I can see how I got into trouble. When I was a fledgling counsellor, intent on learning how to do it properly, I applauded the authors and teachers who advised me to set goals and objectives early in the process. I am, after all, a practical woman, and how can you expect to accomplish something if you haven’t agreed on the thing you want to accomplish? So I would set up an objective-setting conversation.
Me: ”I would like to set some objectives for our work together. It will be easier for us to get things done if we both know what we’re trying to do.”
Them: “Okay.”
Me (the you-first approach): “What would you like to accomplish?”
Them: ”I want to deal with my anger,” or ”I want to increase my sense of self-worth,” or—and this one is a real stinker—”I can’t think of anything we can accomplish unless my wife is willing to sleep with me.”
Let’s face it. Future-focussed though I wanted to be, I found that I really wasn’t very good at goal-setting. I wanted to do it early in the counselling process, and I couldn’t get it to feel right. I wasn’t exactly sure how to deal with anger, and I didn’t feel I could promised to increase anybody’s sense of self-worth. As for getting a wife to sleep with an unhappy husband, well, the best I could do was change the subject. Vowing to set goals it later, I’d wander off in other directions, only to find that once you start exploring the conversational caves, losing yourself for hours in the tunnels and blind alleys, it’s generally easier to abandon the idea of goal-setting entirely. When it came time to impress professors with student papers I’d look back at my files, desperate to find one where goals had been documented and achieved. Ultimately I’d end up disappointing myself by basing my papers on files where no clear goals had been set.
Imagine my relief when I found there was a future-focused alternative! Rather than goals, I could work with hopes. There are a few factors that make hope-setting easier and more desirable than goal-setting. You can get hopes earlier than you can get goals. What’s more, you can get more of them, and as you are getting them, you only have to hope for them. You don’t have to promise to achieve them.
There are, when you think about it, some basic and important differences between hopes and goals. Hope is an emotion, while goal is a thing. Counselling is emotional work. That is why so many people come to us seeking a cure for anger, an injection of self-worth, an antidote for unhappiness. Goals by their nature—so concrete, so tangible, so objectively measurable—have a hard time finding a comfortable place to flourish in counselling, where the talk tends to be about emotions. It is easier to start with emotions in counselling that it is to start with things.
Hopes relate to wishes, while goals relate to intention. This basic difference permits us to have more hopes than goals. We can hope to visit India some day and enjoy a flutter of pleasant feeling as we say it. But if our goal is to visit India, then we are more apt to say we plan to visit India. Once we’ve said that, we have to start working on it. This makes it easier to have India as a hope rather than a goal. It is easier to wish than to plan. Keeping the future in mind, you can set hopes sooner than you can set goals.
Hopes are imaginative while goals are action-oriented. This important difference shows itself most clearly when we get down to the work of nurturing hopes and goals. When we nurture hopes, we delve into the imagination, try to make it bigger, strive to expand the number of future possibilities. When we nurture goals, our focus is on achievement. We try to be realistic. We narrow the field of possibilities based on a concept of realism. Given the tools available to us at the early stages of a counselling relationship, combined with our limited knowledge about what is realistic for this person, it is easier to nurture the imagination than to nurture commitment to action.
One additional factor makes hope-setting a better first choice than goal-setting. Hopes prefer to take their place ahead of goals. They like to be leaers. When you express hope by saying I hope, you are pairing a feeling with a future possibility and the way you feel tends to influence the way you act. . In fact, it is best to feel hope first if you’ll need to invest a lot of energy on the hard work of achieving a goal. What kind of fool would document a goal and commit to checking on its progress without any hope of achieving it?
When I look at the hopes jotted down on the early pages of a hundred files I see that they are bigger than goals, softer than goals. Emotional and imaginative, they point toward a desirable future not entirely in the control of the hoper. In one file I read: ”I hope to be respected, not just treated as one more case file.” The hoper, as I recall was not talking directly about the relationship that was developing between him and me, but I do recall how it set the tone for the way I thought of him, the way I spoke to him. He had so many obstacles to deal with, so many decisions to make. What he hoped for was to be respected as he stumbled along the journey.
In another file I read: “I am hoping to get a job where I can be happy. ”I am hoping to get a job where I can contribute something. I am hoping to get a job where I can have positive input into situations. I am hoping to get a job where I can stay for a long time. I am hoping to get a job where I will be safe from the possibility of injury.” These hopes, I recall, were the hopes of a man who was not looking for a job at the time, and would not be in a position to do so in the near future. He had, in fact, been sent to me so that he could ”deal with his anger.” By the time I met him I was no longer worried about dealing with anger. I told him we’d get to it eventually. First, though, I was wondering if he had any hopes he’d like to share. And that’s how he got to telling me about his hopes for his next job, which is what led us on a journey of imagination, and gave us the imspiration we needed.
Friday, August 21, 2009
REMEMBERING ERIC CARDINALL
Not long ago a teacher whose work I follow posted a blog about one of her teachers.
POSSUMS, DUCKS AND SQUEEGEES
When I responded with a comment about the on-going memorable influence of teachers, she said she didn’t seem to know much about the influential teachers in my life. Well, there was a challenge. Allow me to introduce you to the Eric Cardinall that I knew, junior high socials teacher at the Jericho Hill School for the Blind, 1965-68.
So often you don’t know what you didn’t know until you learn it, and even then sometimes you don’t know you didn’t know it unless it happens to be something really significant. Mr. Cardinall and I started together at the Jericho Hill School for the Blind. Before we got there I had been attending Lougheed School a thousand miles away in Lougheed Alberta, and he had been teaching half a block away at Jericho Hill School for the Deaf. Suffice it to say that the worlds we had left were light-years distant from the world we had entered. The world we had entered was comprised of tight little knots of blind students who had been learning together for many years. There were things they’d been taught, ways of being a blind student from the first day of school. I had been speaking sighted language. He had been speaking sign language. I, the only Wendy I had known in the first 12 years of my life, was joining a class of 12. Two other Wendys had been there a long time. They lived their lives by double names first and last. How else could you speak to either of them without getting the attention of neither or both? Now that there were three of us, it was the rule that I should become WendyCookson, a compound name uttered as quickly and loudly as possible to avoid further annoying confusion.
“Too confusing,” declared Mr. Cardinall, tied in a tangle of Wendys on the first day of school. “I shall call you Cooky.”
I’d never been called Cooky before. It would have been completely out of order back in Lougheed, where Cooksons were plentiful. But in this foreign landscape the name was all mine, a gift of individuality from Mr. Cardinall, a man carving out his own space as he carved out mine. He was learning Braille. This was a bit surprising to me. Having travelled so far to attend a school for my kind, I did think the teachers would know Braille. But it wasn’t required of the junior high teachers, and so the majority of them didn’t bother with it. We read Braille—or nothing if we weren’t good at Braille. They read print. Mr. Cardinall studied in the evenings and learned a little more each day. Proudly he would display his new learnings. I knew how he felt. I had learned Braille on my own a few months earlier. Every day of that heady time had seemed like Christmas.
Mr. Cardinall taught me geography—by touch. “Here,” he said, “are five balls of play dough for each of you.” We each laid down a sheet of paper and placed the balls where he said they should go. One was Saskatoon, another Regina. “Off to the left and a little way up is Edmonton—the closest we’ll come today to where Cooky lives. Place Calgary below it. Now go way down and a little to the left for Vancouver,” Walking around the room, he adjusted our blobs for more accurate relativity.
I wonder now if Mr. Cardinall knew that I had never before given consideration to the relative location of cities. Mine had been a life of guided transportation. People took me places. I got into a car, or boarded a plane. The rest of it was unimportant until I discovered that I hadn’t known it. Yesterday, as I booked a plane ticket to Saskatoon, my hands reach back through time to touch those play dough blobs. I’ll be flying a little bit down, and a little to the right.
POSSUMS, DUCKS AND SQUEEGEES
When I responded with a comment about the on-going memorable influence of teachers, she said she didn’t seem to know much about the influential teachers in my life. Well, there was a challenge. Allow me to introduce you to the Eric Cardinall that I knew, junior high socials teacher at the Jericho Hill School for the Blind, 1965-68.
So often you don’t know what you didn’t know until you learn it, and even then sometimes you don’t know you didn’t know it unless it happens to be something really significant. Mr. Cardinall and I started together at the Jericho Hill School for the Blind. Before we got there I had been attending Lougheed School a thousand miles away in Lougheed Alberta, and he had been teaching half a block away at Jericho Hill School for the Deaf. Suffice it to say that the worlds we had left were light-years distant from the world we had entered. The world we had entered was comprised of tight little knots of blind students who had been learning together for many years. There were things they’d been taught, ways of being a blind student from the first day of school. I had been speaking sighted language. He had been speaking sign language. I, the only Wendy I had known in the first 12 years of my life, was joining a class of 12. Two other Wendys had been there a long time. They lived their lives by double names first and last. How else could you speak to either of them without getting the attention of neither or both? Now that there were three of us, it was the rule that I should become WendyCookson, a compound name uttered as quickly and loudly as possible to avoid further annoying confusion.
“Too confusing,” declared Mr. Cardinall, tied in a tangle of Wendys on the first day of school. “I shall call you Cooky.”
I’d never been called Cooky before. It would have been completely out of order back in Lougheed, where Cooksons were plentiful. But in this foreign landscape the name was all mine, a gift of individuality from Mr. Cardinall, a man carving out his own space as he carved out mine. He was learning Braille. This was a bit surprising to me. Having travelled so far to attend a school for my kind, I did think the teachers would know Braille. But it wasn’t required of the junior high teachers, and so the majority of them didn’t bother with it. We read Braille—or nothing if we weren’t good at Braille. They read print. Mr. Cardinall studied in the evenings and learned a little more each day. Proudly he would display his new learnings. I knew how he felt. I had learned Braille on my own a few months earlier. Every day of that heady time had seemed like Christmas.
Mr. Cardinall taught me geography—by touch. “Here,” he said, “are five balls of play dough for each of you.” We each laid down a sheet of paper and placed the balls where he said they should go. One was Saskatoon, another Regina. “Off to the left and a little way up is Edmonton—the closest we’ll come today to where Cooky lives. Place Calgary below it. Now go way down and a little to the left for Vancouver,” Walking around the room, he adjusted our blobs for more accurate relativity.
I wonder now if Mr. Cardinall knew that I had never before given consideration to the relative location of cities. Mine had been a life of guided transportation. People took me places. I got into a car, or boarded a plane. The rest of it was unimportant until I discovered that I hadn’t known it. Yesterday, as I booked a plane ticket to Saskatoon, my hands reach back through time to touch those play dough blobs. I’ll be flying a little bit down, and a little to the right.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
GOBSMACKERS
One time my mom and I got gobsmacked together. It was a long time ago, back before the word gobsmacked came into the popular vocabulary. We were waiting for dinner in a revolving restaurant in Honolulu, having a glass of wine while we waited. One glass of wine, you say. What difference can one glass of wine make? Well, for some it might not be much, but one glass of wine on an empty stomach was a lot of alcohol for Mom and me. We decided to visit the Ladies’ Room. All was well until we came out. And that is when we were gobsmacked. For the washroom had stayed in place, or, at least, had turned with the earth, while the restaurant tables—accelerated by an unseen motor--had moved. Heading back to our table we found that our table had disappeared. Somebody else’s table had taken its place. There we stood, Gobsmacked; utterly surprised; astonished; a little bit disoriented; a little bit speechless. the experience lingered on, not so much in fact as in feeling. It lingered long after the waitress rescued us--revolving restaurant waitresses get used to the rescue routine.
I think of it today, as I celebrate the news that my hope workshop proposal has been accepted for presentation next summer at the National Storytelling Network conference in Los Angeles. I find myself reflecting on one significant difference between a fabulous workshop and a fabulous story. A fabulous workshop educates you. It inspires you. It activates your curiosity. A fabulous story does all this and one thing more. A fabulous story leaves you gobsmacked. Is there a storyteller on earth who does not hope to create that experience for a listener?
Gobsmacked! It doesn’t happen often, but it’s been done to me a few times by a few different storytellers—Elizabeth Ellis, Donna lively, Carmen Agra Deedy. It’s left me knowing things I didn’t even hope to learn and being glad I learned them. What other word could so appropriately describe my reaction the first time I heard Tim Tingle tell a story about the Choctaw people on the trail of tears? It happened five years ago at a National Storytelling Network conference in Bellingham, and I’ve been thinking and talking about the Choctaw people ever since. Tim’s name was unfamiliar to me, but I signed up for his workshop on collecting stories. I sat down in a stuffy classroom, gave this stranger the majority of my attention and then suddenly—the workshop was over and I was gobsmacked—not so much by the workshop itself, which was educational and inspiring, but by the story inside it. Without any intention on my part to admit them, the Choctaw people had taken up a space in my heart. I exited slowly, a little bit disoriented, a little bit speechless.
You know you’ve been gobsmacked when, for a fraction of a fraction of a second, your world speeds up, or maybe it slows down. Your attention is somehow refocused. Next thing you know, your world has fallen out of line with everybody else’s world, leaving you in a different place—somewhere you didn’t expect to be. If I would be granted only one explanation to justify all the time and money I have spent pursuing master storytellers it would be this: Once you’ve been gobsmacked by a story, you tend to search for a recurrence of that experience, the way people return to casino tables, lured by the memory of their winning times while their losing times fade to the background.
Master storytellers can gobsmack you, not every time, maybe not even most of the time, but they can do it, and the feeling is fabulous when they do. They can make you laugh at things that shouldn’t be funny and dissolve you in tears when you hadn’t thought to bring a tissue. They can make you believe you’ve been to places you know you never visited. They can trick you into caring about historical events, attach you irrevocably to people whose fate you had never once pondered.
If you go to a conference or festival where master storytellers gather, there is a reasonable chance of being gobsmacked. So much goes on at such events that I usually make a few notes. I note stories that interest me—there are many, and stories I might consider telling—sometimes there is a story or two. But if a story should happen to gobsmack me, well that’s another matter. For the after affects of my engagement with that story, the reverberations from that moment of surprising disorientation will be with me for a long long time, starting a voyage of discovery I had never intended to take.
Storytellers tend to put on workshops at conferences, and sometimes even at festivals. It’s a thing they are expected to do, a forum for teaching their craft to others. So they develop workshops on collecting stories, or organizing storytelling events, or inspiring hope through story—if that is where their expertise lies. But if there’s ever been a workshop on how to gobsmack your listeners, I’ve not yet seen the advertising. Gobsmacking is most likely to occur when a skilled teller applies vivid language to interesting content. It describes a process during which the heart steps in front of the mind and takes over the listening. It happens to somebody in a crowded room, though probably not to everybody. Mostly, I think, it happens by magic.
And so, as I peer a whole year into the future, to a day when a roomful of people who have never heard my name will show up for a workshop called “Hopeful Telling from Inside Out: Audaciously Spreading Hope Through Story” I gather my tried-and-true hope materials. I know they will not let me down. Then I reach forward in a tentative gesture of hope, permitting myself to briefly wonder how one should prepare to tell a gobsmacker. Is it something you prepare for, or do you have to count on the magic?
I think of it today, as I celebrate the news that my hope workshop proposal has been accepted for presentation next summer at the National Storytelling Network conference in Los Angeles. I find myself reflecting on one significant difference between a fabulous workshop and a fabulous story. A fabulous workshop educates you. It inspires you. It activates your curiosity. A fabulous story does all this and one thing more. A fabulous story leaves you gobsmacked. Is there a storyteller on earth who does not hope to create that experience for a listener?
Gobsmacked! It doesn’t happen often, but it’s been done to me a few times by a few different storytellers—Elizabeth Ellis, Donna lively, Carmen Agra Deedy. It’s left me knowing things I didn’t even hope to learn and being glad I learned them. What other word could so appropriately describe my reaction the first time I heard Tim Tingle tell a story about the Choctaw people on the trail of tears? It happened five years ago at a National Storytelling Network conference in Bellingham, and I’ve been thinking and talking about the Choctaw people ever since. Tim’s name was unfamiliar to me, but I signed up for his workshop on collecting stories. I sat down in a stuffy classroom, gave this stranger the majority of my attention and then suddenly—the workshop was over and I was gobsmacked—not so much by the workshop itself, which was educational and inspiring, but by the story inside it. Without any intention on my part to admit them, the Choctaw people had taken up a space in my heart. I exited slowly, a little bit disoriented, a little bit speechless.
You know you’ve been gobsmacked when, for a fraction of a fraction of a second, your world speeds up, or maybe it slows down. Your attention is somehow refocused. Next thing you know, your world has fallen out of line with everybody else’s world, leaving you in a different place—somewhere you didn’t expect to be. If I would be granted only one explanation to justify all the time and money I have spent pursuing master storytellers it would be this: Once you’ve been gobsmacked by a story, you tend to search for a recurrence of that experience, the way people return to casino tables, lured by the memory of their winning times while their losing times fade to the background.
Master storytellers can gobsmack you, not every time, maybe not even most of the time, but they can do it, and the feeling is fabulous when they do. They can make you laugh at things that shouldn’t be funny and dissolve you in tears when you hadn’t thought to bring a tissue. They can make you believe you’ve been to places you know you never visited. They can trick you into caring about historical events, attach you irrevocably to people whose fate you had never once pondered.
If you go to a conference or festival where master storytellers gather, there is a reasonable chance of being gobsmacked. So much goes on at such events that I usually make a few notes. I note stories that interest me—there are many, and stories I might consider telling—sometimes there is a story or two. But if a story should happen to gobsmack me, well that’s another matter. For the after affects of my engagement with that story, the reverberations from that moment of surprising disorientation will be with me for a long long time, starting a voyage of discovery I had never intended to take.
Storytellers tend to put on workshops at conferences, and sometimes even at festivals. It’s a thing they are expected to do, a forum for teaching their craft to others. So they develop workshops on collecting stories, or organizing storytelling events, or inspiring hope through story—if that is where their expertise lies. But if there’s ever been a workshop on how to gobsmack your listeners, I’ve not yet seen the advertising. Gobsmacking is most likely to occur when a skilled teller applies vivid language to interesting content. It describes a process during which the heart steps in front of the mind and takes over the listening. It happens to somebody in a crowded room, though probably not to everybody. Mostly, I think, it happens by magic.
And so, as I peer a whole year into the future, to a day when a roomful of people who have never heard my name will show up for a workshop called “Hopeful Telling from Inside Out: Audaciously Spreading Hope Through Story” I gather my tried-and-true hope materials. I know they will not let me down. Then I reach forward in a tentative gesture of hope, permitting myself to briefly wonder how one should prepare to tell a gobsmacker. Is it something you prepare for, or do you have to count on the magic?
Saturday, August 15, 2009
free?
One day I was digging in my purse. I wanted to make a phone call. So down I plunged, past the cheque book, past the nail clipper that has no file because airport security snapped it off just after 9/11, past my thyroid pills and pain killers, past the comb I use for comb concerts and occasionally for my hair, past cough drops and gum and pens and a Braille writing slate, all the way down to the deep dark bottom where the heavy stuff sinks. When I finally drew out my cell phone a teenager sitting beside me peered at it and said, “What’s that?” That’s how old my cell phone is.
Yes, my cell phone is old, old but I still love it. Sometimes you get something that’s so good, so unbelievably good that you think maybe you ought not to mention it to anybody, in case you got it by mistake. This, for some time now, has been the case with my cell phone. And though it has never let me down, has always worked well enough, it’s not the phone that I value so much as the plan, a plan I got back in the olden days when $11.00 could buy you something nice. It’s a pay-and-talk plan. For less than $11.00 a month, or maybe it’s just a wee bit more, the company takes the money out of my account and gives me voice messaging and 25 minutes worth of air time, way more than I need. Nobody calls me to offer me more features, nobody pesters me at all. Every so often I go away from home and clear out some of the extra money that accumulates on the plan by making a long distance call.
And so, given how unbelievably good that cell phone has been, you can probably understand how distressed I was when, after several tries, it finally dawned on me that my phone would no longer make calls when I was away from home. And I simply had to face the truth, the party was over. It’s a cutthroat world, and so I knew that they had finally caught up to me and taken away a privilege. If a thing seems too good to be true, then it probably is.
I called up the phone company to explain the problem. I practiced the call for several days before I actually made it. Experience has taught me that customer service lines can make me angry very quickly, and I don’t like to hear myself screaming over the phone. The call started just as I had imagined it would, with a tour of many options, a recording, a musical interlude, assurances that my call was important. Suspicion was rising. So was my temperature. Finally I was connected to someone whose English I could barely understand. So things were just as I had expected them to be. Even hope ladies don’t seem to be able to change this!
Still, it seemed that I had to make this call. I explained the problem. He repeated my explanation. I tried to be patient. In turn the agent, once I got used to him, was patient and competent. He asked me to take the battery out of my phone. I did so. He asked me to put it back in. I tried. He was patient while I tried. He was patient while I tried again and again. He was patient while I searched for David and got him to try. He was patient while David tried again.
Then he said, “Excuse me, but we need not continue this. Your phone is very old. I can send you a new phone free of charge.”
And here it was, exactly what I expected. I wasn’t born yesterday. There is no such thing as a free phone.
“What kind of a contract will I be entering?” I asked.
“None,” he said.
“How will my monthly bill change?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“It will be exactly as it has been?”
“How much will the shipping cost?” By now I was desperate to find the loophole.
“We will ship it free,” he said. And then, “What colour do you want, black or red?”
“Which one costs more?” I knew I had him this time.
“They are both free,” he said.
So I ordered black, and then I got an email confirming the order and showing no charges.
And I still believe there is no free lunch, but I think there might possibly be a free phone—for hope ladies, and maybe for other people too. Come Christmas I will be reconsidering my theories about Santa Claus. Way to go Telus!
Yes, my cell phone is old, old but I still love it. Sometimes you get something that’s so good, so unbelievably good that you think maybe you ought not to mention it to anybody, in case you got it by mistake. This, for some time now, has been the case with my cell phone. And though it has never let me down, has always worked well enough, it’s not the phone that I value so much as the plan, a plan I got back in the olden days when $11.00 could buy you something nice. It’s a pay-and-talk plan. For less than $11.00 a month, or maybe it’s just a wee bit more, the company takes the money out of my account and gives me voice messaging and 25 minutes worth of air time, way more than I need. Nobody calls me to offer me more features, nobody pesters me at all. Every so often I go away from home and clear out some of the extra money that accumulates on the plan by making a long distance call.
And so, given how unbelievably good that cell phone has been, you can probably understand how distressed I was when, after several tries, it finally dawned on me that my phone would no longer make calls when I was away from home. And I simply had to face the truth, the party was over. It’s a cutthroat world, and so I knew that they had finally caught up to me and taken away a privilege. If a thing seems too good to be true, then it probably is.
I called up the phone company to explain the problem. I practiced the call for several days before I actually made it. Experience has taught me that customer service lines can make me angry very quickly, and I don’t like to hear myself screaming over the phone. The call started just as I had imagined it would, with a tour of many options, a recording, a musical interlude, assurances that my call was important. Suspicion was rising. So was my temperature. Finally I was connected to someone whose English I could barely understand. So things were just as I had expected them to be. Even hope ladies don’t seem to be able to change this!
Still, it seemed that I had to make this call. I explained the problem. He repeated my explanation. I tried to be patient. In turn the agent, once I got used to him, was patient and competent. He asked me to take the battery out of my phone. I did so. He asked me to put it back in. I tried. He was patient while I tried. He was patient while I tried again and again. He was patient while I searched for David and got him to try. He was patient while David tried again.
Then he said, “Excuse me, but we need not continue this. Your phone is very old. I can send you a new phone free of charge.”
And here it was, exactly what I expected. I wasn’t born yesterday. There is no such thing as a free phone.
“What kind of a contract will I be entering?” I asked.
“None,” he said.
“How will my monthly bill change?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“It will be exactly as it has been?”
“How much will the shipping cost?” By now I was desperate to find the loophole.
“We will ship it free,” he said. And then, “What colour do you want, black or red?”
“Which one costs more?” I knew I had him this time.
“They are both free,” he said.
So I ordered black, and then I got an email confirming the order and showing no charges.
And I still believe there is no free lunch, but I think there might possibly be a free phone—for hope ladies, and maybe for other people too. Come Christmas I will be reconsidering my theories about Santa Claus. Way to go Telus!
Friday, August 14, 2009
A DAY AT THE LOUGHEED FAIR
Once every couple of years we spend the second Saturday in August hanging out with my extended family at the Lougheed and District Agricultural Fair. When friends ask what we do there, I always say we hang out with family. It’s easiest that way. Long ago I discovered that an unjustified description of the daily events tends to leave them a little speechless. There they sit, not wanting to say the wrong thing, trying tactfully to figure out just how serious I might be about my passion for the Lougheed Fair.
We are visitors at the fair, some of the few attendees without at least one job to do—though this year we did spend half an hour keeping Dad Company on gate duty and collecting a few $5.00 admission fees. “Best entertainment $5.00 can buy,” says Dad. Free all-day horse show, free cattle show, free baseball tournament to watch, free visit to the museum and a chance to view all the prize tags affixed to the displays in the curling rink.
For a visitor the day begins at the museum with a pancake breakfast. By 10:00 you need to be standing somewhere along the parade route to be entertained by trucks with company logos, antique cars, horse riders and kids driving quads. Most of the floats throw out candy for the kids. It’s best to stand near children. Some floats throw really good chocolate bars.
By noon all the booths are open. You can get pie and coffee at the curling rink, or a cold plate at the arena. Out on the grounds you the hamburgers and frying and the hotdogs are grilling. There is ice cream and mini doughnuts, so many things to drink. There’s a beer garden too, though I’ve never been there. We who dine on parade chocolate bars usually end up spending most of the day around children.
My nieces and nephews are serving pop from a trailer, showing their horses, passing their kids back and forth, encouraging the next generation to ride. Their mom helps out in the announcer’s booth. At several points in the day we abandon the lawn chairs at the show ring and stroll through the curling rink to revisit the first prize tags on Dad’s woodwork. At one time the carpentry would have been made from new wood, but these days there are recycling categories. He has brought tables and coat racks crafted from waste wood and school desktops that gave service when he was a child. There are baked goods and jams, quilts and flower arrangements, ripe tomatoes, photography and children’s art. T
It’s all on display for us to admire. The judges were here yesterday.
And then there’s the museum, a cluster of buildings from the village and the countryside. When you think of history and exclude aboriginal history, nothing can be very old in an area that was settled in the early 20th century. But the 20th century was a time of rapid change. The museum church is the church I grew up with, the one nurtured by Granny and Mom. The pews are the ones I squirmed on, the kneelers the ones I ached on, the pump organ is the one I played at summer Bible school. One of the schools on the property—yes, there is more than one school—is the country school attended by my father and sister. There are their names on the register. That same school was the community centre of my youth. Never can I walk to the door without recalling how it felt to bite the bottom off my ice cream cone at the annual summer picnic. Why did I bite it off? Well, to understand that, you’d have to understand why I once put gum in my hair. I think I did it because somebody said not to. On fair day I step on to the platform where I performed at many a Christmas concert. I sit on the bench play the piano that is only slightly more out of tune than it was 20 years ago when Mom insisted that the school should be incorporated into the museum.
Fair day ends with a barbecue supper. Nobody can really claim hunger, but everybody lines up for supper. We are a four-generation party of 22. We might have been 23, but one teenager broke rank and ate early with a friend.
Did I mention that Lougheed has a population of 200, that the population of the countryside grows smaller every year as the farms grow larger? It’s only when you think of these numbers that you can understand what a fully participatory event the fair is. All volunteers pay the admission fee. All volunteers pay for meals. All pay entry fees to show horses or woodwork. Dad is right. The day is a bargain. But more than that, it is a commitment to a way of life.
We are visitors at the fair, some of the few attendees without at least one job to do—though this year we did spend half an hour keeping Dad Company on gate duty and collecting a few $5.00 admission fees. “Best entertainment $5.00 can buy,” says Dad. Free all-day horse show, free cattle show, free baseball tournament to watch, free visit to the museum and a chance to view all the prize tags affixed to the displays in the curling rink.
For a visitor the day begins at the museum with a pancake breakfast. By 10:00 you need to be standing somewhere along the parade route to be entertained by trucks with company logos, antique cars, horse riders and kids driving quads. Most of the floats throw out candy for the kids. It’s best to stand near children. Some floats throw really good chocolate bars.
By noon all the booths are open. You can get pie and coffee at the curling rink, or a cold plate at the arena. Out on the grounds you the hamburgers and frying and the hotdogs are grilling. There is ice cream and mini doughnuts, so many things to drink. There’s a beer garden too, though I’ve never been there. We who dine on parade chocolate bars usually end up spending most of the day around children.
My nieces and nephews are serving pop from a trailer, showing their horses, passing their kids back and forth, encouraging the next generation to ride. Their mom helps out in the announcer’s booth. At several points in the day we abandon the lawn chairs at the show ring and stroll through the curling rink to revisit the first prize tags on Dad’s woodwork. At one time the carpentry would have been made from new wood, but these days there are recycling categories. He has brought tables and coat racks crafted from waste wood and school desktops that gave service when he was a child. There are baked goods and jams, quilts and flower arrangements, ripe tomatoes, photography and children’s art. T
It’s all on display for us to admire. The judges were here yesterday.
And then there’s the museum, a cluster of buildings from the village and the countryside. When you think of history and exclude aboriginal history, nothing can be very old in an area that was settled in the early 20th century. But the 20th century was a time of rapid change. The museum church is the church I grew up with, the one nurtured by Granny and Mom. The pews are the ones I squirmed on, the kneelers the ones I ached on, the pump organ is the one I played at summer Bible school. One of the schools on the property—yes, there is more than one school—is the country school attended by my father and sister. There are their names on the register. That same school was the community centre of my youth. Never can I walk to the door without recalling how it felt to bite the bottom off my ice cream cone at the annual summer picnic. Why did I bite it off? Well, to understand that, you’d have to understand why I once put gum in my hair. I think I did it because somebody said not to. On fair day I step on to the platform where I performed at many a Christmas concert. I sit on the bench play the piano that is only slightly more out of tune than it was 20 years ago when Mom insisted that the school should be incorporated into the museum.
Fair day ends with a barbecue supper. Nobody can really claim hunger, but everybody lines up for supper. We are a four-generation party of 22. We might have been 23, but one teenager broke rank and ate early with a friend.
Did I mention that Lougheed has a population of 200, that the population of the countryside grows smaller every year as the farms grow larger? It’s only when you think of these numbers that you can understand what a fully participatory event the fair is. All volunteers pay the admission fee. All volunteers pay for meals. All pay entry fees to show horses or woodwork. Dad is right. The day is a bargain. But more than that, it is a commitment to a way of life.
Friday, August 07, 2009
DROP IN THE BUCKET
Another thing off my bucket list! No, not the Taj Mahal, not the Eiffel Tower. Haven’t climbed Everest. But I did get to the Edmonton Folk Festival. First time ever.
The festival has been on for thirty years now, sells out every year. In some obtuse way I have always intended to go. But then somebody would tell me about getting there two hours early to lay down a tarp on a prized piece of spectator real estate, and a scorching hot weekend would persuade me that burning to a crisp was not better than listening to recordings, or I’d be cuddling up by the fire while a drenching rain poured down. All in all, when it came to reasoning, folk festing was always a little out of reach.
It was the younger generation that changed things. I am not sure how many years it might take me to get over the wonder of having our kids want to do things with us, and even be willing to pay their own way. This year the Folk Fest people pulled it together for us by putting on an extra night with Sarah McLaughlin. Ruth wanted to go, and Mark and Tracey went last year and knew how to get us some handy dandy backpacking lawn chairs with drink holders on the side. All things considered, what could we do? Tracey got the tickets. Her friend shopped for the lawnchairs.
We didn’t take a tarp. We simply shouldered our lawn chairs, tucked toques and mitts in the pockets, and smiled at the neighbours who laughed as we passed. They must have been envious, surely! Who wouldn’t smile at a backpacking family in neighbourhood transit?
The stage was already in full flourish by the time we got there. There were no spots near the stage. To get those you have to skip early evening physio.
So we climbed the hill—nearly as high as Everest. Up, up up! And there we settled, side by side, when Tracy Chapman began.
Sarah’s sweet caressing tones floated right up to the top of the universe as darkness fell. A thousand candles on the hill made you forget that there were stars behind the clouds. And as I lay back, with Mark’s blanket slung across three of us to ward off the evening chill, I thought maybe we’d try to come next year, if we can find the time.
It’s hard to work on a bucket list when there are so many things that simply have to be done again.
The festival has been on for thirty years now, sells out every year. In some obtuse way I have always intended to go. But then somebody would tell me about getting there two hours early to lay down a tarp on a prized piece of spectator real estate, and a scorching hot weekend would persuade me that burning to a crisp was not better than listening to recordings, or I’d be cuddling up by the fire while a drenching rain poured down. All in all, when it came to reasoning, folk festing was always a little out of reach.
It was the younger generation that changed things. I am not sure how many years it might take me to get over the wonder of having our kids want to do things with us, and even be willing to pay their own way. This year the Folk Fest people pulled it together for us by putting on an extra night with Sarah McLaughlin. Ruth wanted to go, and Mark and Tracey went last year and knew how to get us some handy dandy backpacking lawn chairs with drink holders on the side. All things considered, what could we do? Tracey got the tickets. Her friend shopped for the lawnchairs.
We didn’t take a tarp. We simply shouldered our lawn chairs, tucked toques and mitts in the pockets, and smiled at the neighbours who laughed as we passed. They must have been envious, surely! Who wouldn’t smile at a backpacking family in neighbourhood transit?
The stage was already in full flourish by the time we got there. There were no spots near the stage. To get those you have to skip early evening physio.
So we climbed the hill—nearly as high as Everest. Up, up up! And there we settled, side by side, when Tracy Chapman began.
Sarah’s sweet caressing tones floated right up to the top of the universe as darkness fell. A thousand candles on the hill made you forget that there were stars behind the clouds. And as I lay back, with Mark’s blanket slung across three of us to ward off the evening chill, I thought maybe we’d try to come next year, if we can find the time.
It’s hard to work on a bucket list when there are so many things that simply have to be done again.
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
ABUNDANCE
Raspberries, strawberries, ripe saskatoons;
Blackberries, blueberries, rhubarb since June.
Apricots, peaches and nectarines fine;
Green grapes and cantaloupe, plums of three kinds.
Carrots, potatoes and peas in the shell;
Green beans and radishes, spinach and kale.
Onions, tomatoes, peppers and squash;
Lettuce and parsley, beets red and posh.
I could eat every minute of each summer day,
No sleeping, no exercise, no time for play.
And I would, if there wasn’t so much to do in summer.
Blackberries, blueberries, rhubarb since June.
Apricots, peaches and nectarines fine;
Green grapes and cantaloupe, plums of three kinds.
Carrots, potatoes and peas in the shell;
Green beans and radishes, spinach and kale.
Onions, tomatoes, peppers and squash;
Lettuce and parsley, beets red and posh.
I could eat every minute of each summer day,
No sleeping, no exercise, no time for play.
And I would, if there wasn’t so much to do in summer.
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
FRIENDS OF THE WORLD
What more hopeful thing can there be
Than a new generation of people to care for our society?
Our summer table offers more than food and temperate air.
A weekend of new friends, new horizons.
One dinner guest is getting a degree in human rights.
A breakfast visitor is teaching animal welfare to aspiring veterinarians.
So all of us should sleep better
Soothed by fresh air and sunshine
And evidence that the world has friends.
Than a new generation of people to care for our society?
Our summer table offers more than food and temperate air.
A weekend of new friends, new horizons.
One dinner guest is getting a degree in human rights.
A breakfast visitor is teaching animal welfare to aspiring veterinarians.
So all of us should sleep better
Soothed by fresh air and sunshine
And evidence that the world has friends.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
HOW IMPORTANT IS HOPE WORK?
Need a reason to focus on hope when you might be tempted to focus on other things? Then go to Messages Of Hope Work Better In Motivating Black Patients To Seek Early Screening For Cancer and you will see how the way we talk about health care determines whether people try to use it.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
WHAT IS HOPE WORK?
WHAT IS HOPE WORK?
Hope work is the art of giving hope in life’s difficult moments.
Hope work is the practice of setting up an environment where people find the courage and wisdom to express the hopes they have.
Hope work is inspiring, exciting, encouraging, intentional and rigorous.
Hope work is the science of learning what the world’s most experienced researchers have learned in the process of studying hope.
Hope work is the discipline of organizing hope knowledge and teaching it to others.
Hope work finds ways to bring hope and reality together and still have both.
WHERE DO WE DO HOPE WORK?
In classrooms,
At conferences,
In counselling,
In support groups,
Wherever people gather to face challenge and find a path to a positive future, that is where hope work belongs.
HOW DOES HOPE WORK?
Hope is the interaction of thinking, feeling, acting and relating that enables us to imagine a future in which we are willing to participate.
We can think more positively.
We can relate more humanely.
We can act more creatively.
We can feel more hopeful.
And when we feel more hopeful
We act more positively
We relate more humanely
We think more creatively.
And we are able to imagine a future we could not imagine only a moment before.
And when we imagine that future, we are already stepping into it.
Want to know more about hope work? Go to HOPE FOUNDATION OF ALBERTA
Hope work is the art of giving hope in life’s difficult moments.
Hope work is the practice of setting up an environment where people find the courage and wisdom to express the hopes they have.
Hope work is inspiring, exciting, encouraging, intentional and rigorous.
Hope work is the science of learning what the world’s most experienced researchers have learned in the process of studying hope.
Hope work is the discipline of organizing hope knowledge and teaching it to others.
Hope work finds ways to bring hope and reality together and still have both.
WHERE DO WE DO HOPE WORK?
In classrooms,
At conferences,
In counselling,
In support groups,
Wherever people gather to face challenge and find a path to a positive future, that is where hope work belongs.
HOW DOES HOPE WORK?
Hope is the interaction of thinking, feeling, acting and relating that enables us to imagine a future in which we are willing to participate.
We can think more positively.
We can relate more humanely.
We can act more creatively.
We can feel more hopeful.
And when we feel more hopeful
We act more positively
We relate more humanely
We think more creatively.
And we are able to imagine a future we could not imagine only a moment before.
And when we imagine that future, we are already stepping into it.
Want to know more about hope work? Go to HOPE FOUNDATION OF ALBERTA
Monday, July 27, 2009
THE LANGUAGE OF I HOPE
A stranger struck up a bus ride conversation. Hearing that I work at a centre for hope studies she asked, “What do you learn in hope studies?”
”Oh,” said I in a desperate grasp for a five-second sound bite, ”I have learned that I can change my day by saying I hope and making sure I feel hope at the same time.”
She was a little surprised, probably more than a little doubtful. That is where it ended, seeing as how she was getting off at the next stop. Not enough time to convince her maybe, but I do hope she was still wondering about it by dinnertime.
Sometimes I look back in wonder at the things I have learned and the points in life at which I learned them. For example, my fortieth birthday had already come and gone before I understood how the simple language of ”I hope” can change things. I can’t say why the recognition came so late. It might be that I simply had never given the matter any thought, or maybe I was a little bit scared to voice my hopes out loud. But whatever the reason, I am over it now, and that is a good thing.
The worst thing—but ultimately the best thing about being a hope specialist is that you pretty much have to be able to do things before you can preach about them, and since I preach a lot about using the language of ”I hope,” I have to work at it. Every morning when I brush my teeth, I try to think one hope for the day in the language of”I hope.” The size of the hope is not important. The hope can be a big and complicated hope: I hope people will be pleased with my workshop. Alternately—and this happens most often—it can be a small hope: I hope the sun will be shining as I walk to work.
The nice thing about saying, ”I hope” is that you get to feel hope. Feeling hope is important. The rule is: whatever the hope may be, I have to feel hope when I say it. That rules out a few things, narrows the field a bit.
Hopes, I have learned, are a little bit like wishes. It feels good to think about them. They are also a little bit like goals, that when you state a hope you have a tendency to move toward that thing, to think of the steps it might take to get there. That’s a good reason to express hopes, to put them out there.
The hard thing about using the language of ”I hope” is that you have to get used to telling the difference between saying hope while feeling hope, and saying hope while feeling fear. Saying ”I hope” when you actually feel hope is a good idea. It takes you in the direction you want to go in. When I say, ”I hope people will be pleased with my workshop,” I imagine smiling faces, flattering comments on evaluation forms, satisfaction expressed over dinner. The images are tantalizing, appealing. I want to move toward them. When I hope the sun will shine on my way to work, I feel like going to work. And if the sun doesn’t shine, well, I’ll cope with the disappointment somehow. Sunny or rainy, the journey to work will be there regardless. I might as well look forward to it for as long as possible.
Saying ”I hope” when you feel something else—fear, for example, is not such a good idea. The difference lies primarily in the images that come to mind. When I say, ”I hope I don’t mess up that workshop,” I am not feeling hope at all. I am feeling fear—the fear of failure. I am envisioning people checking their watches, falling asleep, passing notes to their neighbours. If I say, ”I hope it doesn’t rain,” the chances are pretty good that I am not imagining the warmth of sunshine. I am more apt to be thinking about being soaked, about dripping water off the end of my nose as I rush through the Hope House door. Alas, the upcoming day is something to dread.
Like most things worth doing, saying ”I hope” and matching it with the hopeful feeling takes a little practice, a little discipline. You can’t always hope for things just by saying you do. Sometimes the facts, the history, the undeniable circumstances simply make the language of ”I hope” impossible to use. You can’t reasonably hope for a sunny walk to work if rain is pouring down as you step out the door. But I have found that once you decide to find things to hope for, you tend to find more ways to hope for them. Hope need not lose its grip if it’s pouring rain. I am still allowed to hope for a sunny walk to work tomorrow. It’s the discipline that makes the hoping system work, the commitment to it.
You’ve got to be tough to make an outright commitment to hope language. You have to get used to being the butt of hope jokes. Your friends and relatives will make fun of you. There’s no end to the antics they’ll get up to—expecting you to leap tall buildings with a single hope, daring you to play straight man while they put on hope comedy routines at your expense. No doubt about it, they’re testing you. They’re trying to find out if you really mean it, to see how much risk you are willing to take in hope’s defense.
At least once a week, usually on rainy days, I fervently hope that the world will insist that we hope. When this happens the practice of sneering at hopers will become socially unacceptable. Open hopers will be applauded and the applause will keep on when they have to face the hard stuff. There will be fewer people standing in the wings waiting to say I-told-you-so! the minute there’s a little bit of doubt.
Like any other thing worth doing, the process of getting used to hope language can take a while. Even as I write this article, I wonder how long it took me to really understand the difference between feeling hope and feeling fear. I think it dawned slowly. I started by using the language of “”I hope””. In those days abundance was everything. The more I used it, the better I got at using it. Once I had a nice habit going, I could start refining it. I stopped using hope language when it didn’t feel right. There was a point at which I stopped using that language in sarcasm, and another point at which I stopped using it when I felt afraid.
So I cut the world a little slack in the matter of getting used to hope language. No point insisting that others change until they are ready. Back in the days when smoking was just as irritating to non-smokers but more respectable in society I used to be what my friends called a ”tolerant non-smoker” meaning that I’d choose to sit with them in the smoking section rather than watch them suffer over in non-smoking. But look how things have changed. People used to smoke wherever they chose on airplanes. Now they are hardly permitted to smoke in airports. I figure that a society that can switch so quickly to embracing non-smokers can also make a quick switch to embracing hopers.
Few people dispute that hoping is a good idea. They know it’s a good idea. They just aren’t quite ready to embrace it is a cause. For me, it’s a cause. Just imagine what the world could be if we kept our eye on our hopes for it rather than our fears. Imagine what it could be if we willed ourselves to hope for it and worked at hoping for it. It’s an outcome worth hoping for, worth talking about on the bus—if your listener is two stops away from getting off. If the bell has already been rung, you have to settle for the five-second sound bite and hope that person will still be wondering about it at dinner.
”Oh,” said I in a desperate grasp for a five-second sound bite, ”I have learned that I can change my day by saying I hope and making sure I feel hope at the same time.”
She was a little surprised, probably more than a little doubtful. That is where it ended, seeing as how she was getting off at the next stop. Not enough time to convince her maybe, but I do hope she was still wondering about it by dinnertime.
Sometimes I look back in wonder at the things I have learned and the points in life at which I learned them. For example, my fortieth birthday had already come and gone before I understood how the simple language of ”I hope” can change things. I can’t say why the recognition came so late. It might be that I simply had never given the matter any thought, or maybe I was a little bit scared to voice my hopes out loud. But whatever the reason, I am over it now, and that is a good thing.
The worst thing—but ultimately the best thing about being a hope specialist is that you pretty much have to be able to do things before you can preach about them, and since I preach a lot about using the language of ”I hope,” I have to work at it. Every morning when I brush my teeth, I try to think one hope for the day in the language of”I hope.” The size of the hope is not important. The hope can be a big and complicated hope: I hope people will be pleased with my workshop. Alternately—and this happens most often—it can be a small hope: I hope the sun will be shining as I walk to work.
The nice thing about saying, ”I hope” is that you get to feel hope. Feeling hope is important. The rule is: whatever the hope may be, I have to feel hope when I say it. That rules out a few things, narrows the field a bit.
Hopes, I have learned, are a little bit like wishes. It feels good to think about them. They are also a little bit like goals, that when you state a hope you have a tendency to move toward that thing, to think of the steps it might take to get there. That’s a good reason to express hopes, to put them out there.
The hard thing about using the language of ”I hope” is that you have to get used to telling the difference between saying hope while feeling hope, and saying hope while feeling fear. Saying ”I hope” when you actually feel hope is a good idea. It takes you in the direction you want to go in. When I say, ”I hope people will be pleased with my workshop,” I imagine smiling faces, flattering comments on evaluation forms, satisfaction expressed over dinner. The images are tantalizing, appealing. I want to move toward them. When I hope the sun will shine on my way to work, I feel like going to work. And if the sun doesn’t shine, well, I’ll cope with the disappointment somehow. Sunny or rainy, the journey to work will be there regardless. I might as well look forward to it for as long as possible.
Saying ”I hope” when you feel something else—fear, for example, is not such a good idea. The difference lies primarily in the images that come to mind. When I say, ”I hope I don’t mess up that workshop,” I am not feeling hope at all. I am feeling fear—the fear of failure. I am envisioning people checking their watches, falling asleep, passing notes to their neighbours. If I say, ”I hope it doesn’t rain,” the chances are pretty good that I am not imagining the warmth of sunshine. I am more apt to be thinking about being soaked, about dripping water off the end of my nose as I rush through the Hope House door. Alas, the upcoming day is something to dread.
Like most things worth doing, saying ”I hope” and matching it with the hopeful feeling takes a little practice, a little discipline. You can’t always hope for things just by saying you do. Sometimes the facts, the history, the undeniable circumstances simply make the language of ”I hope” impossible to use. You can’t reasonably hope for a sunny walk to work if rain is pouring down as you step out the door. But I have found that once you decide to find things to hope for, you tend to find more ways to hope for them. Hope need not lose its grip if it’s pouring rain. I am still allowed to hope for a sunny walk to work tomorrow. It’s the discipline that makes the hoping system work, the commitment to it.
You’ve got to be tough to make an outright commitment to hope language. You have to get used to being the butt of hope jokes. Your friends and relatives will make fun of you. There’s no end to the antics they’ll get up to—expecting you to leap tall buildings with a single hope, daring you to play straight man while they put on hope comedy routines at your expense. No doubt about it, they’re testing you. They’re trying to find out if you really mean it, to see how much risk you are willing to take in hope’s defense.
At least once a week, usually on rainy days, I fervently hope that the world will insist that we hope. When this happens the practice of sneering at hopers will become socially unacceptable. Open hopers will be applauded and the applause will keep on when they have to face the hard stuff. There will be fewer people standing in the wings waiting to say I-told-you-so! the minute there’s a little bit of doubt.
Like any other thing worth doing, the process of getting used to hope language can take a while. Even as I write this article, I wonder how long it took me to really understand the difference between feeling hope and feeling fear. I think it dawned slowly. I started by using the language of “”I hope””. In those days abundance was everything. The more I used it, the better I got at using it. Once I had a nice habit going, I could start refining it. I stopped using hope language when it didn’t feel right. There was a point at which I stopped using that language in sarcasm, and another point at which I stopped using it when I felt afraid.
So I cut the world a little slack in the matter of getting used to hope language. No point insisting that others change until they are ready. Back in the days when smoking was just as irritating to non-smokers but more respectable in society I used to be what my friends called a ”tolerant non-smoker” meaning that I’d choose to sit with them in the smoking section rather than watch them suffer over in non-smoking. But look how things have changed. People used to smoke wherever they chose on airplanes. Now they are hardly permitted to smoke in airports. I figure that a society that can switch so quickly to embracing non-smokers can also make a quick switch to embracing hopers.
Few people dispute that hoping is a good idea. They know it’s a good idea. They just aren’t quite ready to embrace it is a cause. For me, it’s a cause. Just imagine what the world could be if we kept our eye on our hopes for it rather than our fears. Imagine what it could be if we willed ourselves to hope for it and worked at hoping for it. It’s an outcome worth hoping for, worth talking about on the bus—if your listener is two stops away from getting off. If the bell has already been rung, you have to settle for the five-second sound bite and hope that person will still be wondering about it at dinner.
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