A Glimpse of Hope

There is a lot of bad news these days. Bad news about the economy, gas prices, massive hurricanes, war, on and on and on it goes.

And everywhere I turn it I find lot of pessimism about all of the above. Gas prices are killing us. People are so down and out. Things are awful. The world is out of control and we're all headed for disaster.

Today I was exercising at Curves. Because of Carolyn's daily schedule, the best time for me to exercise is mid-morning, also known as the time of, "The Old Lady Crowd." I have noticed that older ladies especially gravitate to these conversations of pessimism, talking about how awful things are these days, and how depraved the world is.

Today, I heard something different.

A lady who my family has loved for ages now, came in. I was delighted to see her, and said so. She came in during a very uncomfortable conversation about my mother and smoking *another story for another place* and then things shifted to the economy and how hard it is for people.

The ladies were lamenting the high gas prices and the cost of health care for those who are down and out, etc, etc, and it really seemed as though things were going to go down that hell-in-a-handbasket route, when suddenly Mary Allen said, "I don't know that it's as horrible as we think. I think that it may return us to our communities. We might start being together, living together, seeing one another."

I told her that was the most optimistic thing I've heard anyone say in a very long time. She was delighted at that compliment "coming from a young person."

In her words I caught a vision of hope--Imagine if she was right, if the awful circumstances hitting so many of us these days brought us together. If we started taking care of one another, watching after one another, paying attention to lives other than our own. Maybe if circumstanecs caused us to hunker-down and center in our society could actually be transformed from one of depravity, hopelessness, and cruelty that we see on the nightly news to one of love, and caring, and concern.

I know it's a long shot. Hope usually is. But for a second, I let myself grab onto that hope, and I stopped being so pessimistic.

It was refreshing.