My first real crush was in eighth grade. There was a girl in my homeroom – we’ll call her Lisa – who demanded all my attention. I was the new boy in school, and she was the popular (gasp!) cheerleader. I thought she was a picture of adolescent perfection. Her voice was like spring, and her smile was a crisp Sunday morning. She spoke with a Georgia belle’s drawl, and she always managed to dazzle in a zip-up Gap sweatshirt and blue jeans. I didn’t have a chance with her, and I knew it. But it didn’t matter. Every word from Lisa lifted my spirit. Every look from Lisa set my heart pounding. I didn’t have a lot of friends or romantic prospects, but I had hope that one day Lisa would like me.
Time wore on. My crush persisted three years of high school, more than one battle with acne, and what seemed like an endless cycle of teenage angst. I grew taller and thinner, joined the basketball team, made a few friends, and settled into harassing teachers and causing my parents endless heartburn. At times I chased other girls, but Lisa was always there – a shadow in the corner of my heart – and one summer, after my sophomore year, we went on our first date.
It would be heartwarming to report that Lisa and I are still together. We’re not. Our tumultuous teenage relationship was scattered, overly dramatic, and remarkably uneventful. We went out a few times, dating off-and-on for more than a year; but within months the veneer of my infatuation had worn thin revealing Lisa to be a pretty, but ultimately ordinary teenage girl. She wasn’t the angel I’d hoped for. She was instead, a confused, curious, and emotional kid just like me; and by my senior year we had both moved on to other people and other things.
But to this day thoughts of Lisa and eighth grade bring me a smile. Strange, isn’t it? I haven’t thought about dating Lisa in years, but, forever, that memory of my first adolescent crush will bring with it thoughts of limitless, foolish, brilliant hope
How do you capture a feeling like that? Emily Dickinson tried, writing:
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
William Shakespeare lauded hope writing, “True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings; Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.” The New Testament ranks it as one of the three primary virtues, and at some point in our lives we have all known its beauty. We’ve all heard the little bird’s song and chased it carelessly into unknown places and outlandish dreams. It invariably carried us through college art classes and fourth grade piano recitals. It lifted us over family illnesses and shined light on neglected childhoods. But it is, in too many cases, an increasingly rare phenomenon. It crops up time-to-time – watching the sunrise over a clear blue sea, gazing out over a new country, or looking tearfully into a newborn son’s or daughter’s wrinkly, unburdened eyes. Beyond these moments, however, it rarely sustains us. Hope isn’t something we practice. It feels unguarded or cliché.
What keeps us “meaner creatures” from simply adopting this virtue that could make us kings? What makes us afraid to grant that little bird a perch in our souls?
Right now, it’s half past midnight. I’m sitting in a room in one of the most brilliant cities in one of the freest and most beautiful countries in the world. I am surrounded by love, drowning in happiness, and now, more than ever, hopeful about the future. Not because hope just sprouted up, short-lived and unexpected. Not because good fortune has fallen in my lap or life has grown easy and meek. But because I’ve decided I can’t live without hope, I don’t want to live without it; and it is only through that most wistful of virtues – foolish, unguarded, fought for hope – that I can find persistent joy.
Sometimes I don’t think it matters at all what we hope for. What matters instead is simply that our hope is good and true and pure. What matters is that we have chosen to look forward optimistically, to imagine life in colors more vivid than our dreams, and to charge forward, smiling, into all of this world’s uncertainties.
