Hope & opération numéro quatre

In a strange way it feels a bit like going to the dentist. October 2nd is the date for my fourth surgery—this time on my left lung and on my liver. I’ve had both of these surgeries previously, and so have a sense for what to expect. Lending this kind of familiarity to operations is what makes it resemble the feelings I have about going to the dentist. “I don’t particularly want to, and certainly don’t enjoy it, but it's clearly purposeful and I’ve always made it through just fine, so c’est la vie.” Likening something so traumatic and invasive to the more mundane dentist-going is quite incongruent, I know; nevertheless, that’s the feeling I get. On Thursday, a surgeon will excise one nodule from my left lung, and another surgeon will ablate a lesion in my liver. Clawing our way back from that will then follow, and onward, “tally ho!”

Hope is the theme of the day. A conversation I had with J. a short while ago about hope had me reflecting on how my relationship with it has blossomed since my uber-buddhist days. Of note is my on-going friendship with Alexander Hope, a bright young lad, wise beyond his years, the gentle curl of his hair always seeming to hit the sunlight just right. I shudder to think of the state I’d be in if not for his gentle hand on my back and encouraging tone.

My dharma days had me lumping hope and fear into a kind of single danger zone. But hope sometimes gets a bad rap in popular parlance also—“Hope in one hand and shit in another,” some say. Over the years of working in mental health and now getting familiar with chronic disease, I no longer consign hope to a mere precondition for disappointment. Sure, they may share some of the same genes, but that’s no reason to blemish the potent promise of a mature uplifting hope. It’s a kind of emotional anesthesia that hits the brakes on hoping, but I get it if one's aim is to avoid the anguish of disappointment. The tempering of hope can seem protective, however I think it also deadens one’s sensitivities, those organismic feelers through which we are actually alive.

I know little about what it is to be an artist, but if I were to imagine having an artistic impulse, having a kind of vision for a particular piece of aesthetic work, and to imagine using that vision to then dance with its energy, and to embody and enact the creative work of bringing that vision into existence, of bringing that vision to life, as it were—that’s rather how I see HOPE, its power and purpose and function. Necessarily, we’ll just have to wait and see how the artistic efforts play out, maybe it becomes actually quite like our original vision, or maybe it turns out rather different, we’ll see, we'll see. But the vision never ceases to be vital to the energy of the creative work. In the same way, hope is squarely at the heart of the matter, certainly for me. I want to let my HOPE be wild, released from rigid expectations, free to illuminate plentiful and joyous possibilities.

And then, when disappointments visit, they are generously seated and served at the same table alongside my good friend Alexander Hope. Invited to shake his hand, partake of his charm and grace, even get a whiff of that divine cologne I'm dying to get the name of. And through this warm welcoming, we can all endeavor to understand each other.