losing hope

It’s been a long time since I’ve sat down to write. This pandemic, with all its false promises and deferred hopes has me feeling as weary in the same way a hospital waiting room zaps all my energy. I’ve spent my fair share of time in waiting rooms. And there’s something about the waiting, the unknown, and the inability to do anything productive that just drains me of energy.

All this weariness has me feeling curious. What else have I lost besides the joy of writing? And what are the costs of these losses? Is it possible to cultivate the joy that I’m missing?

This isn’t a post about loss of freedoms, mask mandates, or government control. The weariness of living in the unknown comes with or without those things. And some of us are better suited to living in a world where control is absent than others. Not because we’re better or healthier or more complacent. But because we have lived with lack of agency before – maybe always. We know it isn’t the end of the world. We have experienced powerlessness and we know life continues. In fact, some have only experienced powerlessness in one form or another.

So hope is rarely found in re-gaining power, or some feeling of control. What I’m after is the ability to find joy right in the middle of the circumstance that causes weariness.

Joy. Finding joy. Living a joyful life. These can be thorns – barbs of pain to the one who walks a road of deferred hope. It seems everyone who peddles joy carries a pocketful of guilt. “If you were just living better, you’d be joyful. Your suffering is just a mindset. Stop being so negative. You are unhappy because you don’t believe you deserve happiness.” Each one said with kind intentions. Hurtful still. And wrong.

I do believe in the magic of joy. I crave it. I seek it out. But sometimes my net comes up empty. What are the gifts to be found in that empty net? What opportunities to deepen my self-compassion? And when I find myself there, what are some tricks to get me through?

When joy is elusive – when weariness settles around me like a cloud – I find myself in a place of waiting. Except I’m not quite sure what it is I’m waiting for.

Proverbs 13:12 says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.”

This seems like a silly proverb. Of course I’m sad when I don’t get what I hope for. And of course I’m filled with joy when I get what I’ve been hoping for. Who needed this written down? It’s just common sense.

Except maybe it isn’t so simple. Maybe that’s the problem. We say we know we’ll be sad when we don’t get what it is we’re waiting for, but then we don’t allow ourselves to be sad. We add guilt for not being content to our already sad hearts. We look around at others who have received (in this moment, at least) what it is they were waiting for, and we compare ourselves to them. We condemn our lack of joy. We add fear to the mix. Adding fear to sadness is like adding vinegar to a baking soda-packed paper-mache volcano. We erupt.

And what is it we are so afraid of? We’re afraid we will never find joy. We’re afraid we’re broken – that we don’t possess whatever it is we need to be relevant and human and happy. We forget that this sadness is for the present. We project it into the future, spewing our fake lava everywhere.

Maybe the beauty of the proverb is that it is a sort of permission slip. Been waiting a long time for something? Had any hopes dashed recently? Then allow yourself to feel sad. Take the time to tend to your grieving heart. Stop trying to prove to everyone that you’re ok.

And I think on some level, we’re all a little sad right now. We’ve been waiting for “normal” for two long years. We are weary and disappointed and frustrated. There. I said it. We’re not ok and that’s ok.