I remember when the scent of a new super ball made me feel like I was on top of the world, or how if I pressed my face to the cracked window and inhaled the gas wafting in as the attendant filled the tank of our car, I felt intensely alive and capable.

Back when the call to wrap things up came as the sun set it seemed so easy to find hope, to really feel it. Of course, back then I didn’t call it hope and I didn’t recognize how dearly I depended on those moments of being uplifted.

I’ve stopped keeping track of how many weeks and months it’s been since I began living in a reality of bracing for the next catastrophe, flinching at the inevitable betrayal, or seething at the people who refuse to believe.

Believe.

It used to be about Santa and goodness, it continues to be about having the courage to believe, but now it’s can people believe the woman speaking up or the stories about a candidate.

Hope.

How I hope that people will believe, but I can’t make it happen—for myself or the next person. Seems to me that believing and hope are coming back to the raw ingredients of being aware and being open.

Sometimes you need to believe (or be believed) and if you are lucky, something that gives you hope will arrive in the smell that lifts from the shelf in the kitchen as boiling water awakens traces of popped corn in the fibers. It might be a leaf that skitters across the lot and grabs on to your shoe lace and no matter how you kick or swat, that bit of crimson sticks.

I’m not here to lecture, only to marvel at what is out there; good and bad.

If you are trying or struggling,
you aren’t alone.

If you are angry and weary,
you aren’t alone.

If you are trying to force hope or belief,
you aren’t wrong,
but you also aren’t failing.

Wishing you patience and persistence.