I was in a recovery workshop group yesterday, and the facilitator was asking participants for their understandings of the word ‘hope’. I struggled with that one. I have a difficult relationship with the word. I’m not even sure what it means. It’s probably one of those words that people toss around assuming it means the same to everyone else.

Hope suggests a possibility that something might happen. Belief is stronger than hope, and knowing is stronger than belief. A belief things will get better is not the same as knowing things will get better. Belief is not equal to knowledge, certainty, confidence, etc. Hope is to hedge towards belief, in spite of the lack of evidence to suggest it logical to do so.

Then there is the ‘hope’ found in the ‘four candles’ parable:

Four Candles burn slowly in a dark room. Their gentle light is so soft you can hear them speak…

The first candle says, “I am Peace, but these days, nobody wants to keep me lit.” Then the flame called Peace slowly diminishes and goes out completely.

The second candle says, “I am Faith, but these days, I am no longer indispensable.” Then the flame called Faith slowly diminishes and goes out completely.

Then the third candle says, “I am Love and I haven’t the strength to stay lit any longer. People put me aside and don’t understand my importance. They even forget to love those who are nearest to them.” And waiting no longer, the flame called Love goes out completely.

A little girl enters the room and sees the three candles no longer burning. The child begins to cry, “Why are you not burning? You are supposed to stay lit forever.” Then the fourth Candle spoke gently to the little girl, “Don’t be afraid, for I am Hope, and while I still burn, we can re-light the other candles.” With shining eyes the child took the candle of Hope in her hand and lit the other three candles.

Never let the flame of Hope go out of your life. It’s gentle light can always be found—even in the darkest places. When you hold onto Hope, no matter how bad things look…Peace, Faith and Love can once again shine brightly in your life.

In this passage, hope is what remains when all else fails to sustain. It’s like the last chance before the total darkness of hopelessness. The little girl represents the next generation. “Yeah, we adults messed up and killed peace, faith and love, but we left you a little bit of hope. Work with it.” Alternatively, the little girl may represent the innocence, the total absence of cynicism, required to be hopeful.

It seems, at least for me, easier and simpler to describe hopelessness than it is to describe hope. This is kind of weird because it’s like trying to describe an apple using the ‘absence of apple’. But hopelessness just means not wanting to go on living. That thumping thing in my chest carries on relentlessly, but the walnut up in my head says it’s time to check out. In that case, maybe hope is the walnut in the head saying it’s worth sticking around, even if there’s presently no reason to do so.

Kate Bush, in Cloudbusting (1985):

But every time it rains
You’re here in my head
Like the sun coming out
Ooh, I just know that something good is gonna happen
I don’t know when
But just saying it could even make it happen

Hope dares to believe that something could happen despite lack of evidence and especially in the presence of evidence to the contrary. A knowing that the sun will return when the rain stops. Speaking the words might precipitate the action. When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.

There’s the problem, for me at least. Hope can be a trap because it places the mind into wishful thinking as opposed to being an igniting force for action.

I never questioned the meaning of hope until I experienced hopelessness. Overwhelmed with unreleased grief that was trapped in emotional anorexia, and alone in a self-imposed prison of solitude, and lacking all purpose in life, I was at the bottom in the darkness with the walls closing-in.

Hopelessness is the state in which the mind stops reaching and instead gives up. But this is the point at which I also gave up all of my burdens! I surrendered to the reality in which I found myself. And, most importantly, I became fully aware that my thinking and inaction brought me to that prison of darkness. The enemy was me.

In my surrender, I admitted that something in my character and in my way of thinking and choosing had brought me to that final checkpoint of utter hopelessness. That ‘something’ in me died on the day I chose to carry on. I had to kill it before it killed me, or, at the very least, I had to take the keys away from it and make sure it no longer drove my bus. And in that moment of surrender, for a short while, I felt something different come to life within me.

It was hope.

But instead of wishing, dreaming, or yearning, I had to pivot. I picked up the phone and called my doctor for help.