The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times(10)

“How much does it weigh?” I asked.

“One hundred pounds or fifty-nine kilos.”

“But if you add the velocity of falling, that must have had a much greater impact on your body as you were tumbling down the slopes,” I said.

“Don’t I know it!” Jane said.

“What was it that pushed you to the side?”

“Somebody or some unknown power looking after me up there,” Jane said, glancing up. “That sort of thing has happened before.”

“Somebody—” I began, but Jane was still in the midst of her story. We did not have a chance to discuss who or what was looking after her, but I was sure we would return to the subject later.

“So when I got to an X-ray machine two days later I found I had a dislocated shoulder. And much later after the bruising had long gone from my face, I was sure there was something wrong. And I asked my dentist if he could do an X-ray.”

“Your dentist?”

“Yes, well, you see I was there anyway—and I didn’t want to go through all the bother of making a doctor’s appointment. He said he couldn’t do a proper X-ray, but it looked as though I had a cracked cheekbone. ‘They could put in a metal plate,’ he said. But I was quite sure I didn’t need a plate in my cheek. Just think of security at the airport! And, anyway, I didn’t have time for aches and pains. I had a job to do. I still don’t have time for aches and pains. I still have a job to do.”

So many older people I knew spent a great deal of time focused on their aches and pains, but those who seemed healthiest and happiest were those who focused on something beyond their own troubles. Jane was revealing a powerful example of the resilience and persistence in the face of obstacles that the researchers had told me was essential for hope. Nothing was going to get in the way of her reaching her goal.

“Were you always so strong and so tough?” I asked.

Jane laughed. “No, I was always getting sick when I was young. In fact my uncle Eric, a doctor, used to call me Weary Willy. And I honestly used to think that my brain rattled around in my head. I can’t think why. But I really did get terrible migraines.”

“I used to get migraines, too. They’re awful,” I said.

I was impressed by her mental fortitude that seemingly willed her to become so hardy in adult life. It reminded me of one of the most moving stories I had heard about the power of the mind.

“Do you know the work of psychologist Edith Eger?” I asked, knowing Jane’s fascination with the Holocaust and what it reveals about human nature.

“No, tell me who she is.”

“Dr. Eger was just sixteen when she was in a cattle car with her family on the way to Auschwitz. Her mother said to her, ‘We don’t know where we’re going. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Just remember, no one can take away from you what you’ve put in your mind.’ She remembered her mother’s words even after her parents were sent to the crematoria.

“While everyone around her, from the guards to the other inmates, told her she would never get out alive, she never lost hope. She told herself, ‘This is temporary. If I survive today, tomorrow I will be free.’ One of the other girls in the death camp was very ill. Every morning Dr. Eger expected to see the girl dead in her bunk. Yet every day she managed to raise herself off her wooden bed and to work another day. Each time she stood in the selection line, she managed to look healthy enough that she was not sent to the gas chamber. Each night she collapsed back onto her bunk, gasping for breath.

“Edie asked her how she managed to keep going. The girl said, ‘I heard we’re going to be liberated by Christmas.’ The girl counted down each day and each hour, but Christmas came and they were not liberated. She died the next day. Edie says that hope kept the girl alive and that when she lost hope, she lost her will to live.

“She says that people who wonder how you can have hope in seemingly hopeless situations, like a death camp, confuse hope with idealism. Idealism expects everything to be fair or easy or good. She says it’s a defense mechanism not unlike denial or delusion. Hope, she says, does not deny the evil but is a response to it.” I was beginning to see that hope was not just wishful thinking. It did take the facts and the obstacles into account, but it did not let them overwhelm or stop us. Certainly, this was true in many seemingly hopeless situations.

“I know,” said Jane thoughtfully, “hope isn’t always based on logic. In fact, it can seem very illogical.”

The global situation today certainly could seem hopeless, and yet Jane was feeling hope even when “logic” might tell us that there was no reason for it. Maybe hope is not an expression of the facts alone. Hope is how we create new facts.

I knew that Jane’s hopefulness in spite of grim global realities was focused around four main reasons for hope: the amazing human intellect, the resilience of nature, the power of youth, and the indomitable human spirit. And I knew that she traveled the world sharing this wisdom and inspiring hope in others. I was eager to explore and debate them with her. Why did she think that our amazing human intellect was a source of hope, given all the evil it was capable of doing? Had our cleverness not brought us to the brink of destruction? I could imagine why she found hope in the resilience of nature, but could it possibly withstand the destruction we were unleashing? And why were young people a source of hope for her, given that previous generations had not been able to solve the problems we face and that the youth were not yet ruling the world? And finally, what did she mean by the indomitable human spirit, and how could it possibly save us? But our time together for the day had ended, and we agreed that we would pick up our discussion early the next morning.