Hope is a funny thing.

Tonight I went out to dinner with a friend, and we had a great conversation about the content of life. At the moment, I told her, I feel like I am on the edge of my chair. Maybe you could say that I am on the brink of change. It seems like at the end of each breath there is a small space. I would call that hope.

Hope that at the end of this thing we call life we all get what we were wanting, or if we were lucky, we got more. Hope that we get the job, that we find beautiful people to roll through the years with, that there are enough bottles of wine and warm fires for winter nights. That we have beautiful children, and awful tragedies, and at the end of it all we have enough prospective to still feel like it was all worth it.

Eggs and Honesty.

Earlier this morning, I had breakfast with my friend Andy. On Fridays we go to Yoga, and then come back to my house and I make eggs and toast. It’s glorious. In between bites of egg, I explained to him that even if it isn’t remotely true, I need to believe that I am going to get an amazing job soon. Not only that, but that I will eventually find an amazing man, that eventually my family will be a little bit more sane, and that I will find amazing roommates.

Not to say that any one of these situations keeps me awake at night. In fact, I have found that lately, I am happier than I have ever been. But I realize that depression, anxiety and panic seem to be characters always seem to be just a click away. And it’s not just me, it seems to be everyone at the moment. Turn on the news, and you’ll see what Im talking about. Thousands of people getting laid off, our economy circling the toilet, and thousands of dollars in taxes on their way. There are more than enough reasons out there to fuel whatever issue you want to have.

What I said to Andy through bites of egg was that I simply choose to lie to myself. Every single day. And you  know, I don’t care even a little bit. I don’t care if I’m flying high above reality in my delusional thoughts of getting jobs, finding love, or satisfaction in this broken world.

Maybe that makes me a dreamer. A romantic of sorts.

Did you ever see that movie Hope Floats? I didn’t. But in my mind, I imagine it was a movie about something sad, the characters that find hope, they change, and then things are ok (that seems to be the premise for a lot of movies).   I bring it up because I think maybe hope does float. Maybe people say that because it’s like a metaphor for a life preserver. Or like a seat cushion on a plane if you crash into the ocean. I am told by stewardesses that there are little arm loops that make it a floation device.  Unless you are flying Sully the Pilot, in which case you wouldn’t really need a flotation device.

So I’m concluding my thoughts with this: Life is great. I’m on my couch on a Friday night, dateless, drinking a new bottle of wine that I took a chance on at the grogcery store. Surprise, it turned out awesome. I’m rocking out to Elton John, which I heard in a friend’s car last night and decided to go through an new phase where I am in love with the old good stuff. I’m also munching on amazing Swiss chocolate that my buddy Ben sent to me (I keep the tons that he has sent to me in my fridge for emergency dateless, friendless, wine nights).   And I’ve decided that lying to yourself is the greatest thing that you can do.

I might not get the job that I really want. I might be thirty and single. My family may never change in ways that I want them to. But for now, I’m going to pretend that they all do. Because hope, is apparently an airplane seat cushion.