hope | hōp |

grounds for believing that something good may happen

hope | hōp |

want something to happen or be the case

There is little certainty in life beyond its eventual ending. Depending on how we look at it, this is either a very comforting thought, or a deeply troubling one. If we are looking for certainty beyond our own eventuality, It will be a long wait.

That’s where hope comes in.

Hope is both a noun and a verb. For it to infuse our lives, hope must not only be something we see, but also something we do.

Hope as a noun invites us to look for the evidence that things will work out. Maybe not in the short term, but in the long run. Since the eye, (and the heart) see what they look for, to have hope requires that we train ourselves to recognize it when we see it, and save it up for those times when it is nowhere in sight.

Hope as a verb bids us dare to imagine something being true. In this way, it is like a muscle with which we work for what we want. Walking toward what we envision, without yoking ourselves to certainty, we are free to collaborate with life and whatever it brings our way.

Hope, as much as we yearn for it, is hard. Sometimes life is such that hope feels impossible. Almost like a waste of our time, when life turns on a dime. What was true yesterday no longer is. What we counted on an hour ago crumbles beneath our feet. What we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt the moment before evaporates in front of our very eyes. Given this precarious nature of life, it is no wonder that we go from hopeful to hopeless in the blink of our eye, with nothing in between. Hope can feel like an either or proposition. Getting it right or getting it wrong. A dualistic way of living with only two choices—we can either be full of hope, or not.

That’s where hopeishness comes in.

Hopeishness sits squarely between hopeful and hopeless.

Always there and never out of our reach.

Hopeishness detaches us from the outcome, loosens the grip of fear, and settles us in the present moment, which is all we’ve ever had anyway. It reminds us of all the evidence we’ve collected along the way, making it possible for us to simply take the next right step without needing to know exactly how it will all turn out.

It may not be a real word, but hopeishness is a real thing.