Simple Things/ Lang Kenneth Haynes

       Hope
   It seems that prolonged cold is required in order to truly savor the comfort of warmth; that our appreciation of light is proportionate to the
amount of time we’ve spent in darkness; or that even the tiniest morsel of ordinary food will taste like a feast to a hungry person. If any of this
contains an element of truth, then I wonder the degree to which hopelessness can be understood or, at occupied environments that are
teeming
with hope and opportunity as opposed to those whose surroundings consistently scream out the need to survive instead of thrive. I suppose, as
is the case with most things, that it’s all relative. But let’s take a look at what hope and hopelessness really mean.
    Hope is related to opportunity that is part of the landscape. It’s in the air, it’s accessible, and you don’t have to be super-resilient or a
magician to claim it. Escape from your present environment or neighborhood or school or family is not required. It’s just there. It’s a feeling.
There is abundance for those who are ready and willing to take the defined steps to grab hold of it. Just about everyone in the neighborhood
will have the map, and whether or not they consult it is up to them. The definitions and examples and routes to success are not just shared with
a select few, but with everyone who has an interest or who has a loved one with the power (such as a grandmother, grandfather, mother, father
or family friend) to convince a young person to be interested in their own life because there are tools to help that interest along. But those
instruments won’t do a bit of good if you don’t muster up the courage to take a look at what you want your life to look like. If you don’t define
your life, someone else will define it for you and the chances of your essence lining up with someone else’s prescription for happiness are
pretty slim. Hope is tied to a system of belief that is supported by examples that can be seen, touched and talked about with people who live in
the same world you do. People whose living rooms you have sat in. People you sit next to on the bus. People you see every day and call Mrs.
or Mr. whether you know them or not. People who are clearly going places whether they move across the country or never move at all. Hope is
about choice. Hope is a feeling and people who have it appear a certain way. Maybe they always seem to be smiling to themselves. Maybe
they walk with a certain kind of confidence that doesn’t appear arrogant or challenging. Maybe t hey appear to be confident about who they
are and don’t
have the need to try to bring anybody else down, because they know that putting somebody else down does not make them any taller. There
are people in every neighborhood who possess at least a few of these characteristics. They command respect without ever asking for it.
    Hope and hopelessness have at least two things in common. 1) They are each feelings. 2) They take a long time to make a part of who we
are and how we look at things. It can, and often does, take generations.
    Hopelessness, to my way of thinking, does not come about from mere inconvenience that results from something not coming out the way
we had planned, wanted or even deserved. Hopelessness is the expectation that things will come out badly, that our best efforts will go
unrewarded or unrecognized, and finally that it does not make any sense to be hopeful at all. When we’re in that state it’s hard to see
opportunities because we tend to see these things as mirages the way people who are dying of thirst — with dry, swollen tongues — see
imaginary flowing fountains
and pools of cool, running water in the desert. Better to not even relish the possibility of a cool drink because experience has taught them that
the water will be gone by the time they make it to the pool that will, without much doubt, turn into another sand dune and they’ll be even
thirstier for having entertained the notion of getting a drink. Hopelessness, also, is tied to a system of belief supported by examples that can be
seen,
touched and talked about with people you know. And there is an interesting and precarious intersection of hope and hopelessness. In my case,
it was the kind of ambivalence that was passed on to me by loving parents in the fifties and sixties. My father had been hopeful and had tried
to advance in many ways until the magical day arrived when he discovered or admitted to himself that the things that held him back had
nothing
to do with his efforts and determination. At that juncture of “reality” it was imparted to me — in ways that did not rely on words because there
were, perhaps, no words sufficient to articulate that cutting type of unfairness and devastation — that it just might be best to not be too
hopeful. What does that mean? How can one be partially hopeful? Beats me.
    But I did emerge from that fog of confusion to experience unadulterated hope and the Great Society had a lot to do with it. Hope was in
the air, and I’ll write about what that felt like in my next column.