Edema Rue

“Define hope.”

No. Hope is not something that can be defined; you can’t confine a word so powerful to a simple box, with 8 simple corners and 6 simple sides.  Hope is a word that demands to be freed, demands the ability to twist itself every which way, especially into places it doesn’t belong. Hope doesn’t arrive neatly packaged, with a delivery man who can explain to you exactly what’s coming. Hope arrives like the wind, bending without rhyme or reason, sometimes in a barely felt breeze, sometimes in huge gusts that can’t be ignored. It is a power that can break cities, a power that can be neither controlled nor stopped. So no, I can’t define hope for you. 

Ah, but you want more. Yet, how can I tell you what hope is? It would be as easy to explain beauty, love, betrayal, cowardice. Only, these are words you can’t just know, you have to feel them, deep inside you. You have to hear the air rush involuntarily out of your lungs when you see a beautiful mountain range with trees the color of fire; you have to feel the heat in your chest and in your cheeks when you’re near that person, the one who cares for you more than you could care for yourself; you have to feel your stomach drop when you realize one that you thought would never leave you is gone; and you have to understand the terror as you turn to run from a fight that you pledged your life to. They aren’t emotions you can explain, they’re emotions you have to feel, breathe, live.

So how shall I explain hope to you, then? Should I describe the last breath of crisp, fresh air when one is drowning? Do you want me to explain the look in the eyes of a broken child when you tell them that they are home? Or would you rather me explain the problems with hope? Because hope lends strength, yes, but only so much. It can’t be killed, but it can be misplaced, lost and forgotten. It can be ignored by humans with hearts so stubborn they can’t stand the thought of trying for the fear they will fail.

So how do I define hope to you? How do I take one of the most powerful concepts in existence, a power that most people long for more than anything, and give it to you in only a few words? I can’t. More than that, I won’t. I refuse, because hope is too precious, too easy to lose. Like an artfully crafted spider's web, it can be destroyed in a moment. I refuse to give you the power to snub it out, because even if you don’t understand what you’re doing, by thinking you know what hope is you are breaking its power. And here I sit, doing the same thing, pretending to understand an idea I can only imagine. 

But you see, I have felt it, I feel it, and so I do understand it, on the most basic level. I have taken that first breath of air, looked up with the shining eyes of a child, and I continue to feel it. Still, you want me to define hope for you? I can give you hope, I can do everything in my power to show you that light, but I cannot define it.

Define hope?

“I can’t.”