Lucky Charms and a Bowlful of Hope

"Show me a day when the world wasn't new."  --Sister Barbara Hance

I know I've shared that quote before, but several things this week make me want to chew on it and enjoy its flavor a bit more.

Thursday, for instance, when a few colleagues and I were faced with leading a discussion about the brutal, hard-to-watch documentary "Bully."  I was not looking forward to the evening at all.  It was a depressing, heartbreaking film to watch the first time, much less to sit down and watch again.  And to watch it so close to Christmas?  Well, that just felt a bit cruel.

My foreboding was amplified by events leading up to the second showing--a morning migraine, a flat tire, a clock ticking, a funeral procession, malfunctioning equipment, brutal cold weather. . . .

But one line in that film has since come back to me, over and over again.  Halfway through, Alex, a goofy looking kid from Iowa with a target on his back--a kid who'd been bashed and berated, torn down and kicked--said something that made me think he would be alright.

"I don't believe in luck, but I do believe in hope."

And, just like that, Alex took possession of his life, acknowledging that he would no longer be object, but, rather, subject. 

See, you can't have luck--good or bad--unless it happens to you.  You do nothing to create or repel it.  You simply receive it.  Or you don't.

But hope?  Hope is something you possess, something that swims inside you.  It is, as researcher Brene Brown said, "a function born of struggle."  That idea, that we can blossom in the face of hardship and vulnerability, was a message Brown shared throughout this morning's episode of "On Being."  It's one reason I was so riveted by the conversation.

This snowy, soft, magical day--and a Sunday, of all things!--seems to be the perfect backdrop for a  message of hope born of vulnerability (not weakness, so much as simply being human).  And I've seen just enough dads hauling sleds up the street, just enough dogs romping through light snow and bluejays dodging hawks, I've smelled enough wood-burning fires and fresh-cut Christmas trees today to make me believe that we might be ready for a return to something more hopeful than the fear-addled times we've been living through.

I, for one, am going to give myself one very long hug today--warts and all.