The Hope Machine

(After Ada Limon’s “The Quiet Machine”)

I’m learning so many different ways to be hopeful. To ignore all the logical reasons that tell me to accept despair as a given. To wake up in the morning and still brush my teeth and wash my face and sprinkle my coffee with cinnamon because cleanliness and flavor and warmth are still things worth savoring. I am learning to hope that despite all evidence to the contrary, people really are basically good. I am learning to hope because the children I love do not have the luxury of simply giving up, and they need to see me sitting beside them in the boat, oar in hand, rowing with them on the river that carries us all. I am learning to hope that hope is not a feeling but a decision, and one that I can make every day, just as naturally as I decide to wear a coat when it is cold out or eat soup when I need nourishment. I am learning that hope is food and water and air and breath. I am learning that hope is not the thing with feathers but rather the thing with sturdy shoes that walks out into the elements and keeps moving over the broken sidewalks and the mud puddles and the snowbanks and fields of grass, and whatever terrain comes along. That is how this machine works.