Hope is in the eye of the beholder

 Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash

I’m an optimist. I was five or six when my parents got divorced. I had never even heard the word “divorce” before, so I had a little trouble getting my head around it. After asking a few clarifying questions about who I would live with and  what would happen to my toys, I didn’t think it sounded bad at all.

In my child brain it boiled down to this: Mom and Dad wouldn’t live together. I wouldn’t have to hear Dad yelling and Mom crying anymore. I’d have two sets of friends and two sets of toys. How bad could that be?

Whether we accept what we are dealt and look for the next best thing, or we succumb to despair, is a choice we all have to make. When you’re an optimist, the choice is easy.

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Last night while watching my usual line-up on MSNBC, I watched as pundits predicted Nancy Pelosi’s failure to unite Democratic caucus in the House. My taped shows were replaying in chronological order, but I’d already heard the news on CNN. Pelosi got every single Democrat in the House to vote for the infrastructure bill. The naysayers were wrong.

When the images of Afghanis hanging from the side of a plane as it departed Kabul airport were shown over and over on the news, I knew that as horrific as it was, it was panic that created much of the horror. The Taliban had not penetrated the safety of the airport. When those men climbed onto the wings of that airplane, knowing they would eventually have to let go, which would guarantee their death, they were not reacting to the situation they were in, they were reacting to the situation they imagined.

What if these people had waited until death was inevitable instead of running towards it? They were already at the airport; it was a safe space. They didn’t need to fall to their deaths. But they did because they had no hope.

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It’s easy to be hopeful when you live in a safe place. No one in Afghanistan lives in a safe place. They didn’t before we started the war, and they don’t now. For 20+ years, we made it safer for them, but now that’s over. Regardless of how the Taliban behave going forward, it will be hard for anyone in Afghanistan to have hope now. They’ve seen too much violence. You could say they’ve been programmed for despair.

Still, there are stories of Afghanis who tried multiple times to get to the airport and finally, after a series of near-death experiences, they made it. What if they had no hope? They would have given up. If they had given up, they wouldn’t have made it.

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I wish I could bottle optimism. I wish I knew where I got it. I wish I could wrap it up and send it to Afghanistan.