On hope

“When you stay too long in one place, you forget just how big an expanse the world is. You get no sense of the length of those longitudes and latitudes. Just as, she supposed, it is hard to have a sense of the vastness inside any one person.

But once you sense that vastness, once something reveals it, hope emerges, whether you want it to or not, and it clings to you as stubbornly as lichen clings to rock.” - Matt Haig

I’m nearly finished with Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library and I am thoroughly enjoying it. Aptly called a “beautiful fable” by another author, the easy reading narrative follows Nora, a woman who is allowed the chance to explore other life timelines as she hovers between life and death.

I love Haig’s matter-of-factness about the world and life; that it is “brutiful” - brutal and beautiful - and that this is the experience we all share. Very seldom is anything all one thing or another; very often, it is many things, all at once - sometimes even two diametrically opposed things simultaneously.

Last night I went to a gala event for Take Part, an organization which provides support to families of kids born with rare diseases. One of their primary goals is to provide access to genetic testing where it would not otherwise be available - because getting a diagnosis is the key that often opens doors to the services and authorizations often desperately needed.

The information is a springboard for hope. A path forward.

Sometimes we would prefer to stay in the space of not knowing - the vastness opened up can be terrifying. But, as Haig says - once what is already there is revealed, the human impulse is to persist, to fight, to explore, to…persist.

As we open May, is there a place where you can open yourself more fully to witness what is already there and take heart - hope - for the best outcome for what comes next?

Be well, beautiful people.