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Hardships aside, we have to rely on hope

Marney Rich Keenan

In a few days we will close the chapter on 2008, one of the most horrific economic years in history, especially in Michigan. It will be the year remembered for domino foreclosures, the thousands upon thousands left jobless, and the year that led to more bankruptcies than ever. It has been the year where, according to economists, institutionalized greed has led to the greatest amount of inequality between the haves and have-nots since the Great Depression.

There's widespread fear, uncertainty and anger about the future. I don't know anybody who hasn't been touched by it. There is no such thing as a recession-proof field or business.

Who'd have thought there wouldn't be newspapers delivered in the morning, that half-mile-long factories would be ghostlike, that people would be returning pets to the pound -- beloved dogs and cats -- because they could not afford to care for them?

Everybody took a huge hit: from retirees to college grads lucky enough to be waiting tables, to little kids whose parents can no longer afford day care. Once thought of as a nest egg, our homes are no longer the last-resort savings we thought we could rely on, when all else failed. All else did fail, and the tide swept away the value of our homes along with it.
We are long on fear, short on gratitude, and hope seems little more achievable than a Hail Mary pass. Dare I mention our pathetic Lions?

And yet, it wasn't too long ago when a crowd of thousands gathered late at night at Grant Park in Chicago to see in person the first-ever black man to be elected president of "the United States of America," as he so reverently calls us.

He promised change and diversity to a nation in dire need of both. As he spoke, many of us wept openly. Spontaneous parties broke out in the streets of many cities across the county, like a ribboned cascade of hope.

It won't be long now before we feel that collective hope again, when the young husband and wife with the two precious little girls move in to the White House, replacing a beleaguered and tired leader who failed us in so many ways.

But that hope will be dressed up in pomp and circumstance. It will be largely fleeting. After all, it's not as if we will turn a new leaf immediately. In fact, most believe the economy is going to get much worse before it gets better.

Still, above all else, the New Year should be about hope. Because if hope is the feeling that what is desired can be realistically attained, our road up out of despair requires it.

But while there's a lot of talk about hope, we don't put a lot of stock in its power. Many doubt hope can change the individual circumstances of our lives. And yet hope is more than a dream, more than a wish; it is one of our most powerful emotions.

According to Anthony Scioli, a Harvard psychologist who studies hope (see www.gainhope.com), over 90 percent of oncologists surveyed rated hope as the most important psychological factor associated with increased survival rates among cancer patients. A study of college students found that levels of general hopefulness were more predictive of grades than performance on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

Physiological studies suggest hope may enhance immune systems that have been compromised by stress.

Hope is what carried us through after 9/11. It is what made us appreciate the spire of St. Paul's Church standing defiantly while across the street the twin towers buckled and fell. In the midst of the Great Depression, hope came in the form of Seabiscuit, an unlikely champion race horse.

But hope requires courage, an active effort, a willed state of mind. A wise person once said: "Hope is putting faith to work when doubting would be easier."

As Andy says to Red, his fellow prisoner in the movie: "Shawshank Redemption": "You need it so you don't forget there are things in this world not carved out of gray stone. There is something inside that they can't get to -- they can't touch -- it's yours."

"What are you talking about?" Red says.

Andy replies: "Hope."

Let hope be ours for 2009.

-- Edited by D at 11:24, 2009-01-02