Take a single sentence: Hope is the element…
Place it on the well lit box in the center of Google, Yahoo or Bing and watch what hope is fully capable of inspiring: 15,800,000 websites that bounce your journey from left to right, upside down, inside out then perfectly balanced on the tip of your nose hair before falling on your left ear because it was weighted by a portable device connected to a cell phone.
During these current times, hope is like faith, it’s used and used like skin cream, not once a month or twice a week but instead everyday, every minute into each passing second and then poof…like a midsummer highway mirage it tends to disappear stealing from your ambition any reason to continue chasing it.
The Boston Globe Newspaper writes, “Hope is the missing element.”
The University of California hopes their new scholarship program inspires disadvantaged students to reach outward by way of gaining access to a furthered education.
Author Christopher Cokinos titled his book: Hope is a thing with Feathers: A personal chronicle of vanished birds.
My good friend Al from Costa Rica once said, “The American language is too confusing—to an outsider every conversation you share almost never means what I hear. The word hope has so many different definitions that by the time I figure out what you’re trying to say…the conversation has completed.”
He might be onto something…Dictionary.com had a field day hopefully describing such a hope filled word:
1.
the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best: to give up hope.
2.
a particular instance of this feeling: the hope of winning.
3.
grounds for this feeling in a particular instance: There is little or no hope of his recovery.
4.
a person or thing in which expectations are centered: The medicine was her last hope.
5.
something that is hoped for: Her forgiveness is my constant hope.
–verb (used with object)
6.
to look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence.
7.
to believe, desire, or trust: I hope that my work will be satisfactory.
–verb (used without object)
8.
to feel that something desired may happen: We hope for an early spring.
9.
Archaic. to place trust; rely (usually fol. by in).
—Idiom
10.
hope against hope, to continue to hope, although the outlook does not warrant it: We are hoping against hope for a change in her condition.
Is it too easy to hope? Is it something we should purchase at the store? How long would it take Bank of America to attach a 22.9% interest fee on a hope card then without notice crank it up to 87% because their company leader needs plenty of hope during his final days of decision making?
My eyes first bumped into the hope is the element sentence at 6:05 this morning—Jane Brody’s new book Guide to the Great Beyond, on this particular page she seems to be standing on a twelve by twelve soap box speaking directly into the unaligned chapters medically trained officials write when trying to gather enough positive energy to speak when sharing with their patients any and or all possibilities.
“Dr’s not assistants or nurses should make themselves fully available to bring to each and every patient the element of hope.”
She feels those controlling even tooth decay tend to sway by way of doing what’s right for them and not necessarily the one suffering—they’ll hand the case over to a different doctor or shrug their shoulders in the eyes of defeat which instantly shot me back to the mind, body and soul of a Native American Medicine Man who laid his hand on my right shoulder one frigidly cold winters day and calmly said, “Always remind yourself…doctors waste no time in telling the truth—they practice medicine. You can throw a baseball into a catcher’s mitt six times a day but without practice you’ll never make it to the major leagues and even then, there’s no guarantee you’ll be good enough to stay.”
A middle aged man from the Middle East slowly walks into a Korean temple some two thousand years ago—quickly taking note of the monks praying inside, his view of their shape of spirituality came with shadows, they were horribly large, bulky and out of breath. How could men so close to the one that offered them such blessed leadership be so physically uninspiring? Reaching into his pocket of hope, the middle aged man from the Middle East pulled from his purpose a reason for being there this particular day—while the monks might have been perfectly buff within…the shells that carried them were ready to cave in. Without a doubt, not a second wasted, he spoke to the men with high hopes of changing the way they lived. The middle aged man from the Middle East worked one on one with each who believed in spiritual beings that offered better trails to those on the outside—a skillful workout was generated creating what we call today Tae Kwon Do—the foot, fist and way.
Hope is the element…
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month…everyday women and men are diagnosed with a life changing experience that challenges their personal supply of hope. There's not enough glasses of water on earth capable of refilling what the heart has lost. The eyes of a child speak loudly when their parents tearfully explain to a sound collector at the Levine’s Children’s Hospital that their baby has Leukemia or a rare disease that’s left them staring out a tenth floor window at a world of trees instead of being out there climbing them.
Ask any fighter or survivor what pushed them through the message a doctor sent that said, “You have until this day…” and what you’ll touch is the soul of a brave traveler who didn’t become addicted to hope but rather believed in it.
18,500,000 websites that offer hope and somewhere near you rests a person who sits empty. What are you going to do to help change the next seven generations?
Winning is a choice…so is offering hope to someone you don't know.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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