Friends, I think of this experience often – unexpectedly coming across this steely and quite tangible form of hope.  

Lately I am thinking that maybe all of our roles in life might be reflected in those yellow gloves at the bottom.  

To rise each day,

wherever we may be,

and polish up the Hope.

** Repost from 2022 **

While I walked to a meeting in New York this week, head full of the latest grief-inducing news, I came across the Hope sculpture. I wasn’t feeling very hopeful, and did not want to look like a tourist, but took a quick photo for good luck.

Later on, I noticed a gloved hand poking through near the “E” in the photo. It had never occurred to me that it’s someone’s job to polish up the Hope every day.

I bet there are days when this job seems like an honor, when the sun is shining and the birds are singing and the hope is burnished with love and care. And I bet there are days when this job is drudgery, and a quick swipe with a rag is all that’s possible.

Friends, let us give thanks for those who keep our hope shining.

And when we can, let’s return the favor.

“HOPE IS DEFINITELY NOT THE SAME THING AS OPTIMISM. IT IS NOT THE CONVICTION THAT SOMETHING WILL TURN OUT WELL, BUT THE CERTAINTY THAT SOMETHING MAKES SENSE, REGARDLESS OF HOW IT TURNS OUT.”  

– VACLAV HAVEL

The word “untrammeled” arose in three totally separate conversations recently, which sure seems like a sign. It turns out that untrammeled does not mean undisturbed, as I’d long supposed. Rather, it means free and unconstrained.

This week, I am appreciating all of the people in my life who have seen my very best, when I am far from it. The ones who have believed that I am smarter and kinder and more capable than I have believed of myself. The ones who do not ask for quieter, or lesser, or simpler, or easier. The ones who pull me up by their own living examples, lighting the way.

What a gift they offer.

They do not wish me smaller.

Dear ones, the world needs our fullness.

May we cherish those who believe us into being.

May we be seen.

May we live untrammeled lives.

I started to read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s An Unfinished Love Story as a sort of distraction from the current U.S. political season and all of its noisy isolating polarization. It has turned out to be not a distraction, but an antidote.

For example, she describes her husband Dick’s change of heart regarding his own memoirs when he turned eighty and realized that the entire history of the nation was only “three Goodwins” long:

Dear friends, if we are lucky, we will be able to measure our lives in Goodwin-style lengths. Indeed, when I read that the first U2 album is closer in time to Pearl Harbor than today, I have to double check the math.

So much can happen,

much of it good,

some of it great.

If only we keep going.

Getting started, keeping going, getting started again — in art and in life, it seems to me this is the essential rhythm not only of achievement but of survival, the ground of convinced action, the basis of self-esteem and the guarantee of credibility in your lives, credibility to yourselves as well as to others.

      – Seamus Heaney

This seems to be the season for pie charts.

Asset allocations? Here’s a pie chart.

Nutritional analysis? Here’s another.

Life planning exercise? You guessed it.

Dear ones, it’s true that our budgets might benefit from this kind of view, and our schedules might be enhanced by careful planning.

But the substance our lives is not meant to be chopped up and rearranged into an ever-elusive optimized solution.

Unlike a pie, the very best parts of life are not finite.

Wonder is not a pie.

Imagination is not a pie.

Love is not a pie.

Friends, let’s plan the things that need planning, and allocate the things that need allocating.

And then let’s revel in life’s unbounded delights.