My clients discussed the concept of hope in our support group last week. Each group member is dealing with a serious illness, and one of them brought up a story she had heard on television. A father and son were in Auschwitz together, and one night the father used their ration of margarine to light a flame for Chanukah. The son asked his father why he would waste their ration like that, and his father replied, “A person can live three weeks without food, three days without water, but he can’t live an hour without hope.”
The group talked about this and explored some ideas: Is hope the same thing as a wish? (Conclusion: no, hope is abiding and a wish is fleeting, hope is general and a wish is specific). Is hope the same thing as positivity? (Conclusion: no, hope does not require a constant positive attitude, but the openness to the possibility of better days).
Last week I had a very hard day (heard of a NEW guy, had a lot of hope, he turned out to be really not for me, crashed, felt hopeless). I fell asleep that night not knowing how I could get through another day of this. I woke up around 4 am. My bedroom light was still on and my phone was next to me. I turned on a song on Spotify and let the app continue to play when the song was over. My jaw fell open with the next song: “When You Believe” from The Prince of Egypt. I was not previously familiar with either the song or the musical (although it seems the Maccabeats have a cover version), but the lyrics spoke directly to my soul. I listened over and over. It was exactly what I needed to hear. (There is one minute of the song, from 2:20-3:20, when the cast sings pesukim from Az Yashir and that makes me uncomfortable so I skip it). The song is about praying for a long time and not knowing if the miracle will come, and then it does. One line in particular stands out: “Though hope is frail, it’s hard to kill.”
Who knows what miracle you can achieve when you believe? Just a tiny ember of hope to hold onto can keep you going.
