Tonight (well, last night at this point) was the Oscars. I
don’t normally watch them, and I only saw maybe one or two of the movies that
were up for awards (I don’t’ get out much between the thesis writing and the…
well… thesis writing), but I watched them tonight because there was a party and
there was champagne. Who wouldn’t watch the Oscars if there was champagne (Besides Neil Patrick Harris was hosting and wasn't he sexy as hell)?
Anyway, watching the Oscars got me thinking about hope. I’m
sure not all of the nominees were necessarily waiting at the edge of their
seats waiting to be called, but at least a few of them were. Wouldn’t you? We
do the same thing all the time: I hope against hope that I will get famous
someday or at least make a nice cushiony living off a career that seldom
suffices to pay most people’s bills. I hope I will meet the right man and fall
madly in love and raise beautiful children together who will grow up to be
successful in their own rights. I hope to always have friends and to own a home
with a yard where I can keep a garden and maybe some chickens.
Some of my hopes are realistic and perusable, and maybe some
of my hopes are too outlandish to really believe in, but it is important that I
keep them. It is important that I hold onto hope itself in all its forms
because when it comes right down to it, hope is really all we’ve got – ever.
Sure, sometimes a hope becomes a reality, but before it is reality you made it
real in your mind and heart and that realness that it held in your mind guided
your actions to make it a reality.
Hope (or it’s absence) is fodder for a writer. Without hope,
there’s no story. So what do you hope and strive for? What does your character
hope and strive for? Figure that out, and you are well on your way to creating
what someone might call art someday – there’s a slim chance that you’re the
next Hemingway, but keep hoping (and writing) and maybe someday your hope will
come true.
