Borrow Hope Until You Can Build Your Own

Hope is one of those things that we don't seem to recognize until it's absent. We take it for granted. When things are going well, it's just assumed that we'll find ways to make our wishes come true tomorrow. It's there as we make plans for the summer, or for college, or another job, or where we'll be in five years. It's second nature, a given, as we move from one phase of life to the next. We don't pause to say, "I hope this happens," because we know that it will.

Only when our lives take an unforeseen turn do we begin to see how much we'd relied on that sense of optimism.

Loss of some sort changes things, whether it's a devastating medical diagnosis, divorce, the death of a loved one, or falling into an addiction of some kind, or facing financial ruin or any number of other disappointments. What used to seem like the most wonderful time in the future now seems more and more to be an uncertain proposition. Often, it's not something we realize is happening until suddenly we look around and see that we haven't been planning on anything new for quite some time.

I think that's why those months and years of struggle tend to be so discouraging. With hope fading, it's easy to feel that not only our own future is dark, but that no one, anywhere, is really prepared to face the future. We think, Everyone has it together EXCEPT me. After all, who among us hadn't been through a few soul-selling seasons in our lifetimes?

What gets us through those periods tends not to be much stronger than a borrowed hope, really. I'm not talking about will power here. Forcing ourselves to believe in a brighter future when nothing inside is indicating that there is one can be exhausting. Borrowed hope is something else completely, but it is similar to hope in the same way that a hand-me-down dress is similar to one that's brand new. It's something that someone else possesses and is willing to pass on to us until such time as we can find our own again. It's knowing that there are times when the hope of other folks truly needs to outweigh our own.

When I look back on the people who have had the most positive impact on my life, I don't think about their answers. I think about their questions. I think about the people who never stopped believing that this, too, would pass and who never stopped asking me how they could help. They listened to long rants I didn't realize were venting and reminded me that this too shall pass, sometimes giving me advice and sometimes just showing up, simply lending me hope until I had mine again.

Sometimes hope comes disguised as a trusted friend who picks up the phone when no one else will. We find it in counselors who reassure us that we're doing better than we know. We discover it tucked into the pages of books, as authors write about people just like us who got through similar circumstances. We receive it as generous strangers reassure us that yes, kindness does still exist in the world. We may not always realize it, but we are constantly borrowing bits and pieces of hope from people around us, hoping that one day, we'll have our own.

Learning to ride a bike is probably the best analogy I can think of. In the beginning, we're being pushed along by someone walking beside us, one hand on our backs, the other on the seat of the bike. We have their hope to rely on, their strength to help us balance. We might not even realize it when their hand finally slips away, but we suddenly find ourselves riding on our own.

I think that's how hope works. One day we look back and realize that, somehow, we were making plans again. We found ourselves laughing, or looking forward to seeing someone, or finding reasons to go on. It wasn't easy or immediate, but somehow it happened. We began relying less and less on the hope that other people gave us and more and more on the hope that lived inside.

Maybe that's part of why it works that way. Hope doesn't diminish when we pass it on, the way most things in life do. It grows, because people who've been through seasons of discouragement and needed someone to pick them up along the way are then able to give that same hope to someone else who needs it. They still remember what it was like to need someone to believe in them, so they continue to encourage others, even when they can barely believe in themselves. They can see the value in helping someone else weather their storm, because they've been there, too.

I think that's part of what makes us human, too - that we never have to rely solely on our own strength or on the strength of just one other person. We can lean on both, knowing that there will always be people along the way to help us get through things, people who understand what we're going through because they've had similar experiences. Then one day, we become those people for someone else, showing up as hope in their lives the way they showed up for us.

Maybe that's how hope works - that it always finds its way through people to get to those who need it most, quietly and without fanfare, until someone who'd barely believed in tomorrow suddenly becomes a pillar of hope for someone else who needs to know that better days are coming.