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[violachic]

For sometime more than a year now (I can't remember exactly when) I've had the name on my journal as "a thing with feathers". It comes from a beautiful Emily Dickinson poem, one of the first of hers I ever read, about hope being "the thing with feathers/that perches in the soul". As a kid, even when I didn't entirely understand the poem and all its implications, I was drawn to the imagery, taking comfort in the idea that hope would never leave me, even if I willed it to.

Hope is a funny thing. So often we hope for things that we know, rationally, may never be. I know that I still hope, no matter what the news reports tell me, that someday Israel will end its occupation of Palestine; I hoped every day for more than four months that all four hostages would be released alive, even in that awful, awful week when the video was released wherein there were only three shown; I hope desperately that the best friend of one of my friends will survive her cancer, even though she has stopped taking treatments and is making arrangements for what happens if she doesn't survive.

To keep hope alive takes irrational thought. But it is the irrational thought that leads to dreams, and dreams lead to actions. Rarely is what is hoped for granted immediately, like a fairy tale wish. Often it morphes and evolves, spurred by dreams, and sometimes it even comes to fruition.

There is a cost-benefit ratio to hope, I suppose. Is the tiny sparkle of optimism that glints in the darkness worth the emotional energy it requires to sustain hope? Is the potential devastation of not receiving what you desire worth the magnificence of what you have hoped, dreamed, prayed and worked for coming true? I believe these are almost purely rhetorical questions, possibly only answered by a host of other questions. But those who hope ask themselves questions like this constantly; how can you not?

In the last two years I've entered places of darkness I'd never dreamed of before. I do not compare my darkness with other's; everyone has their own experiences, and their own sets of reactions to those experiences. I only know that I often wondered how I got there, and how the hell I was going to get out. I wanted to be able to snap my fingers and *poof* be back to where I had been before. But we all know that never happens. For so long I held out hope that my life was eventually going to get back to "normal". For much of that time, I didn't even know what "normal" was anymore. I'm not sure I know yet. But what's important is that in the midst of those darkest places, when I'd had enough, and was the most terrified and depressed and wondering, there was still a tiny bit inside of me somewhere that clung to hope. Even when I didn't know what I was hoping for. And its true, hope can never leave me, even if I will it to, not completely. Maybe that is grace- although that's an entirely different topic for an entirely different conversation.



I think this is the really long way of telling everybody that I think things are starting to look up. I'm not ready to change my journal name yet, but things are definitely starting to look up.





Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

- "Hope"- Emily Dickinson

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[violachic.livejournal.com]

thank you *hugs* remember, come see us, 'k? I want to hear all about school :-)