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- Hope Is The Thing With Feathers
A recurring theme from conversations I’ve been having is “hope.”
What it is. What it is to have it, or, to not have it. What it is to instill it, or, to have it stripped away from you.
What it means to have hope at different stages and ages of life and experience.
What it means to be hopeless, and to know that experience, including the trauma of it, and how it - it’s sticky.
And the place my brain will always go when I’m thinking about that word is Emily Dickinson.
It’s a line I’ve written about before and repeat often to myself.
“Hope is the thing with feathers.”
It can fly, but it doesn’t mean it is flying.
Hope feels like untapped potential. The kind you’re aware you can tap. But you haven’t done anything with it, yet, at least not in that moment, and it’s presence gives you some semblance of comfort, no matter how uncomfortable you feel in the moment you’re checking on it.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
I always get hit by that last line. The reminder, that -
Hope. Will. Not. Ask. You. For. Anything.
It is just going to sit there. Wait for you to notice. Fully feathered.
Cold. Idle. Knowing.
But when you need it, if you know it’s there, it means everything.
The presence of it.
Because not everybody knows what its like to be in the presence of hope.
Keep that in mind.
Read this poem and feel the weight of it.
I’m putting it here so I can share it more readily, maybe you’ll want to share it too.