Hope

Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence. - Lin Yutang

Now that the election is over, I have found myself torn between hope for the future of our country and the cynicism born from and then reinforced with every election since Reagan’s first term. The 1980 election was the first in which I was able to vote. Since that time, over and over again, I have voted against candidates, learning to hope only that things wouldn’t get worse than the way they were at the moment of the election. My hopes for real change were buried long ago. I did not believe that government reflected my values and beliefs in any way, shape, or form. Government was something to be endured, filled with politicians who lied, ignored the ordinary citizens of the United States, and functioned more like a monarchy than a democracy. With each election, my hopes dwindled and my cynicism grew.

I wish I could say that with this election, I voted with my heart filled with joy and the belief that things could be different. I can’t. I voted FOR Obama, the first election in 28 years that I’ve actually voted FOR someone. I voted FOR Obama in spite of the little cynical voice in my head that said, sure, he’s an inspiring speaker, but he’s a politician; he can talk about change, but things will just go on as they have. I voted FOR Obama because of the tiny spark of hope that I still carry for my country. I’ve stayed in the U.S., in spite of threatening to leave for Canada after each successive election, because really, I do love it. That made each election cycle more and more painful, and the layers of my cynicism deeper and deeper. If you know that you will be hit, and that it will hurt, you learn to protect yourself from the blow. My cynicism protected me from the pain of feeling more and more disconnected from my country and my government.

My friend Craig sent me an email on the night of the election. He, unlike me, has been both hopeful and joyful during the election process. He wrote, “It is time to write a new story....government is good...taxes are not a burden, but rather the cost of living in a country that values the common good over individual greed...make peace not war....and hopefully, someday in the not to distant future, we will hear the words "Made in America" again....”

He wrote another email today: “This election was a sea change that comes along once in a generation, and the support is there for bold, aggressive, and progressive leadership...twenty eight years ago Ronald Reagan brought change to Washington and rewrote the story....if you recall he said welfare queens were abusing the system, government was bad, taxes were a burden, and we needed a big stick when dealing with the rest of the world....that story died on Tuesday night. Now it is our turn to write a new story....”

“Our turn.” This is where my hope comes from, that Obama’s government might actually listen to the people it governs, that it might take its power FROM the people, not impose power ON us. I didn’t listen to Obama’s victory speech until today. I said I didn’t have the time or opportunity, but really it was fear. I was afraid to hope. I was afraid of peeling back the layers of cynicism to uncover my hope again. I knew from past experience that reviving hope hurts at first; it hurts to wake something up that’s been sleeping for a long time.

I found the speech online and tried to mentally steel myself to listen to it. I’d watched the yes, we can speech on YouTube with millions of others. That was when the election was still in contention, though. Cynicism won out then, because I did not believe that Obama could win the election. This time, knowing that other people had chosen hope over fear, knowing that Obama was the president-elect of the United States, I wanted to hope, too. I wanted hope even though I knew that hope would bring pain. Maybe just hoping for hope opens the heart. Or maybe knowing that so many others were also hoping made me feel less alone than I’ve felt for a long time…. I’m not sure. I do know that watching that speech broke open a place in my heart where my hope has been sheltering, curled into a protective ball. It broke through the shame I’ve felt for my country, the pain I’ve felt in admitting that I am an American. I didn’t just get a little teary. I broke down and cried. To be honest, I don’t think I’m done crying yet. I have 28 years of grief in my heart.

Obama’s speech made me remember something from my own past. When I was in junior high school, the school I went to was not a “good” school. Basically, the entire school of kids had been written off, since we lived in a low-income part of the city and weren’t expected to amount to much. Teachers had no real support from administrators. No one listened to us. No one cared. We were “those” kids. We lived up to those expectations. In music class, we caused a variety of subs to leave, vowing never to come back to “that” school again. Then we got a new principle. He started to build up the morale of the school. I remember he passed out copies and used this quote all the time. I won’t remember it exactly, but it was something to the effect that engineers, etc all say that the bumblebee is incapable of flight because of its wings – but the bumblebee doesn’t know that. We thought of ourselves as kids that didn’t matter, that didn’t count. He brought our school hope, and the bumblebee became the symbol of that hope. Even then, I was surprised at the amount of change that happened in only a year.

I’ve seen what hope can do. I’ve also seen how fast hope can work, when it’s followed by action. I’m going to choose to keep my heart open to hope, even though I’m still a little bit afraid. Like Craig wrote, “Now it is our turn to write a new story.” And it is.

OUR. turn. to. write. a. NEW. story. Yes, we can.