Hope.  Hopelessness.  Two sides of the same coin?

I’ve been thinking about hope recently, inspired by a book I just finished reading entitled Lessons For The Living:  Stories of Forgiveness, Gratitude and Courage at the End of Life by Stan Goldberg.  Stan is a cancer survivor and volunteers in a hospice.  He brings what he has learned from these experiences into the book.

Here’s an excerpt from his chapter entitled “The Dilemma of Hope.”

Poof!  Not only did hope disappear, but as I looked back on who I became during the intervening time between the onset of hope and learning that my dream wasn’t going to be fulfilled, it wasn’t pleasant realizing that I had allowed hope to let the new me slip away.  People often contrast hope with hopelessness, as if the former is always positive and the latter always negative.  It’s a false dichotomy based on a simplistic understanding of the role of hope.  For Joyce [a hospice patient], hope prevented her from living in the present and appreciating the marvelous things she had accomplished.  For me, hope transformed the scientist and humanist in me into someone who put all faith on the throw of the dice.  Worse, for eighteen months it robbed me of being more genuine with the people I loved.

The absence of hope isn’t a negative state.  The disappearance of hope put me squarely into the present…I no longer invest energy in hoping that the cancer will remain under control — I’m too busy living.

Past, present, future.  We need all of them.  Sometimes looking at the past enables us to reframe it so that we can live in the present.  So that those hooks of past experiences don’t weigh us down, rather they inspire us to go forth in our lives. And sometimes those memories from the past bring us great joy in the present as we remember a fun adventure or a now past loved.  And yet we can’t live in those past stories, we live here.  Now.  In the present moment.

Hope takes us, me, to the future. I want hope.  I want hope that things can be different.  It is part of what inspires me.  I help people connect with their own answers in the belief that they can achieve something different for their next moment. That’s hope.  Maybe it is even beyond, more, deeper than hope.

At the same time I don’t want hope to take me out of connecting with this moment – of seeing what is in front of me right here, right now.  Of being with what is.

I can also feel an edge to hope – the edge that says I want something different and yet I have to consider it might not happen.  If I know it will happen, then it is knowing, belief – beyond hope.

I’m reflecting on hope in the context of a good friend of mine who is living with a lot of pain right now.  I so hope for him to be pain free. There it is – that edge of hope that says maybe he’ll never be pain free.  In the present moment I find myself having to let in his pain and that’s uncomfortable for me.  It hurts to see someone I care about in pain.  Having hope seems easier.  It takes me out of having to fully accept his reality in this moment.  It enables me to side step the depth of my own emotions.

So if I don’t have hope, is it hopeless?  No.  Hopeless feels dark and I don’t feel dark.  There is a deeper knowing here that regardless of what tomorrow brings, I’ll be okay.  He’ll be okay.  It may not be pretty, but it will be okay.  It will be what that moment of life brings.

So perhaps the other side of hope, as Stan suggests is presence.  And perhaps it is belief, knowing.  Surrendering to what is.

Text and Images Copyright © Dr. Catherine Hajnal 2011, 2012