I run on hope and good conversation and DrPepper…though, I wouldn’t have said I had hope all the time because sometimes, my hope is excited and optimistic. It’s full of joy and anticipation and smiles. This hope is the easy-to-believe in hope. It’s wide-eyed hope.

But, really, most of the time, my hope is cranky. “It’s gonna be FINE.”, it snaps. No smiles. No joy. Just tacit trust that everything will be OK, or that we will, even if everything shakes apart at the seams. This hope is not so easy to believe.
It’s squinty-eyed hope.

But, whether hope is cranky or excited, it is always stubborn. It wraps its arms and legs around me like a small child and holds on for dear life, even when it would make sense for it to let go because it knows that one day, it can will leap for joy and scream, “I TOLD YOU!” in elated vindication. And it does. It runs around throwing rainbow colored confetti in the air in triumphant jubilation, even the cranky hope. Even the hard won vindication brings celebration. Even when hope and I have crossed the finish line broken and battered, exhausted from the fight, hope still celebrates because hope is stubborn.

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.

Anne Lamott