There’s a small supermarket down the street from where I live. I go there almost daily and have gotten to know the employees by name. A few weeks ago I had gone to pick up bread and milk. As is my custom, I asked the cashier who was serving me, whose name is also Maria, how she was. Instead of the customary response of “I’m fine” she said, “How should I be? There’s nothing to be happy about.” In the few seconds it took to respond, my mind was processing how we’re stuck in an unbearable cycle of negativity; it seems as though we have been trained to hold on to negative thoughts; how 3 million people in Armenia seem to be afflicted with a constant, nagging dissatisfaction and misery; of hopelessness.
“But we’re alive and we’re healthy. We have our children and grandchildren and they’re healthy. Isn’t that something to be happy about?” I asked. She looked up at me and the crease in her brow seemed to disappear for a second, and almost tenderly, she said,’ Yes, Maria, you’re right. Have a good day.”
For the record, I am a hopeless idealist and I am almost always hopelessly hopeful. I see the world, always, half-full and never half-empty. Even in the depths of my despair...because I have been in the depths of despair, I have held on to hope. Not because my brain is wired that way, but because the universe has been kind enough to have given me the life lessons and experiences to know that you always come out on the other side of despair stronger, wiser, yes a little bruised, but certainly a better person.
I acknowledge that hope is an abstract construct and when you’re struggling, engulfed in poverty and injustice, when you can barely feed your family, when your son is on the frontlines of a simmering war, when your husband is a labor migrant and you are alone and scared, when you have aging parents you can’t care for, when you feel that the whole world is conspiring against you, hanging on to hope may be excruciatingly difficult, perhaps even impossible.
In the absence of hope, however, every other human condition or emotion - love, joy, fulfillment, dreams, success, peace - cannot exist. Imagine love without hope for its longevity. Imagine joy without hope. How can you be fulfilled if hope is lost? How can you find peace in the absence of hope? How can you dream for a better life if there is no hope for a better life?
I also acknowledge that in a country that is struggling, that is engulfed in poverty and injustice, that is sitting on a simmering conflict, I lead a privileged life. Maybe people will think it’s easy for me to be hopeful. But my life hasn’t always been easy. I suspect my sisters and I have spent most of our adult life trying to get over our childhood, I doubt we ever will, but the only thing that allowed us to survive was love and hope.
