A bit of irony. . .

So my mother and I were talking about her hope to walk again. My thoughts were channeling through my head at rates that would shoot me into space. But mainly I was thinking, "Shit." The neurologist gave her a glimmer of hope in a few simple words and immediately I started wondering what the consequences were going to be and if I was prepared to deal with them.

It's funny. I am the girl that is all about hope, all about promoting internal happiness. However, I am also the one wondering what the consequences are going to be of that doctor giving my mother a glimmer, a whisper of hope.

I guess my ideals were a bit different than what my mom had in mind. My hope was that my mom would one day be able to navigate the world in a wheel chair, discover true love, and be happy. Meanwhile her's maintain even more simplicity: to be able to feel like she is giving something to the world and to be mobile.

I love that she is optimistic about being able to walk again and just about life in general. She where's her heart on her sleeve and often times she ends up heart broken because of it. (Yes that remark is directed towards certain, very specific people, that shall remain nameless for this post.) I have seen the pain that loosing hope can cause my mother and to so many people. I have seen the vines of disappointment griping our throats, the terrors that permeate my household when dreams are lost. I have seen sadness and have felt pain and so has my mother. Every time she manages to come out a better person than before but the scars left because of the lack of hope and dreams run deep in my family. So even to this day, even after working so hard on this project I find myself challenging hope. The thing I live for. The thing we all live for in one way or another.

This is what I said to my mother during a conversation we had this evening on the subject of her walking again, "I can watch you loose your mobility, I can be there for you in anyway possible. But when it comes to you loosing hope that is the one thing that impacts be above all else. That is the one thing that is going to scar me for life. The one thing I will remember is the hope that you lost so many times. It will break my heart."

After saying that I realize that it grips the core of who I am. I search for hope so much because I have seen the consequences of loosing it. I have seen how it can destroy a person only to build them back up. So I challenge hope. I fight to give it to people but I challenge what it is. Is it good or bad? I have seen it make people's lives worth living, but loosing hope can be the same as loosing a will to live. I see so many ups and so many downs of this thing called "Hope."

I have come to the final conclusion : I think hope is like authority, it can be exactly what is needed but it also needs to be questioned.