Finding Hope

It seems that our nation, in its great divisions over the economy and healthcare, has lost hope. People are depressed. They see themselves as merely scraping by, and they’re not sure that the nation is going to pull itself out of the quagmire anytime soon. It’s no accident that The History Channel is capitalizing on fear through all of its apocalyptic shows on the end times. So where do we find hope? Under what rock is the secret hiding that will take us out of our misery?

Ten years ago, two close friends were killed. My boyfriend dumped me the following month, and I had no job or money at the time. I went to the mall and looked at the coin fountain, wishing I could scoop up all the loose change without the mall cop arresting me. I was hoping to be abducted by aliens.

I went home and did the only thing I knew how to do: write. Then I prayed, cried, beat my fists against the wall, and wrote some more. I did this every day for a week. When I couldn’t write anymore, I went to a small town newspaper and asked for a job.

“Got any writing samples?” the editor asked.

I pulled out my steno pads full of scribbled angst and bitterness and handed them to the editor.

“You can start tomorrow if you don’t mind writing obituaries,” he told me. “You’ve got a knack for chronicling the morbid. Just try to lighten up a bit, okay? Remember, you’ll be writing about people’s relatives.”

Desperate, I took the job. A year later, I was covering dog shows and county fairs. After that, I changed papers and started to cover human-interest stories.

Here’s my point. The way to find hope is not to keep sitting around waiting for a result. Hope is a process, not an end-product. When I wrote those obits, I connected with people and was able to show real sympathy to individuals mired in grief. In covering other people’s losses, I shook off my own. My work, my skills, my talent—they were all parts of a process by which I connected to other people, and ultimately, bigger stories. Many years later, however, I’m still writing about people. Finding hope is a process of focusing on others and affirming them to the best of our abilities. Remember, they’re looking for hope, too.