I had a strained relationship with hope before my wife was diagnosed with cancer. To me, hope was a high waiting for a low, a fix with a nasty flipside. Far from the precious entity exalted by legions of poets and philosophers, hope was just another coordinate on the pain/pleasure cycle existing in infinite balance with its opposite. In the same way that happiness alternates with sadness, or desire with loss, hope alternates with fear. One requires that the other exist. Hope was for suckers, and I was no sucker. Or so I reasoned. The times I didn’t need hope, that is. But when life would clobber me over the head with misfortune, there I was, clinging to hope like a dear, misunderstood friend. Since my wife’s diagnosis, however, my relationship with hope is no longer strained. It’s been severed completely. I’ve abandoned hope, and in the process have met a new friend: peace. To abandon hope is to trample the plotline of feel-good movies, to renounce the rhetoric of … [Read more...]