"Hope” is the thing with feathers
And sings the tune without the words
I found this poem of Emily's from John Green's short mention of it in a tiktok on hope; here's the link to it:
https://www.tiktok.com/@literallyjohngreen/video/7158882703633288491
It made my brain do some thinking. Then I wrote the first draft to this post, struggled to find the words to describe whatever I was feeling, and went to sleep. It's now two days later and I barely remember what my initial thoughts were and what triggered me to write. What I do remember is how it made me feel. Seen.
Hope is the song of a bird in a tree that stands there undisturbed by any wind. The tree stands. The bird sings. Nothing changes really. The seasons may go by, but you'll eventually hear the birds again. And even if you don't hear the birds for a long time they're still singing.
It's the fact that the sun is always rising or setting in the middle of the horizon somewhere in the world that fuels this hope. The song goes on because somewhere a child hears a bird sing the last bit of it and starts humming it while playing. The melody runs on because the child learns to play piano and eventually plays what he remembers of it.
Nothing is really ever lost because the variation of entropy in a thermodynamic cycle is always null. This machine that we call life may not have the best coefficient of efficiency but at least it doesn't waste hope.
The hope that we "lose" goes somewhere else without us knowing. Maybe the couch we put out on the street after we moved out of our ex-boyfriend's house was found by a couple who just moved in together. Or by a lady with a cat that scratched her old couch to bits.
Those bits and pieces of fabric we see as waste. The summer mornings we hear the song of the birds we see as temporary. When really they are the biggest constant in these lives of ours.
Little things like these make me emotional. They make me finally put my phone down after scrolling for hours. I'm transported back to when I was the one with no hope at all. And no belief in the concept of hope either. Hope had always been singing in the past.
Here is where I would overshare about all the examples of traumatic times in my life and the one speck of hope during those times that I can only find now when looking back through my memories. But I won't do that in writing. Instead here's a more recent thought of mine.
All the people that I will get to love in my life that I don't know yet are out there singing with the bird right now. What does it mean?
The title of my most recent spotify playlist is "roll out of your bed while sleeping and call it falling in love". That is precisely what I feel like I have been doing this entire time. Half of my life probably. The expression of "falling" in love sums it up fairly decently. I have been falling into things and friendships and situationships and relationships and even more friendships and I will continue to do so. Half of it isn't and won't ever be under my control. Most affinities aren't intentional or as predictable as we'd like. I have been learning and accepting that's how things are and I'm adapting pretty well if I may say so myself.
Yet I can't shake the annoyance of not knowing. Having no clue where my next friend will pop out of, or where my soulmate is hiding. I admit it, I want to know so bad I feel like I'm already falling, just in an endless tunnel instead of somebody's arms.
The next quote I read somewhere that ended up in my spotify playlist's description reads "You carry so much love in your heart. Give some to yourself." I really feel the burden of that love right now. I'm a gnome with a sack bigger than himself carrying all this love over what seems to be a mountain (I'm too short to tell) and huffing and puffing all the way up. Trust me, I've been giving enough to myself and I'm always learning how to balance self-love and self-improvement.
The problem right now is waiting. Continuing to wait to hear this song of love, for the sparks, for the kinetic energy. No potential stuff anymore please, thank you God. I'd like to think that waiting makes the heart grow fonder, but like John Green said about hope, that's bullshit.
The love of my life is somewhere singing right now. Are they singing the song of hope? If not, maybe the birds are. If they aren't or if my soulmate isn't that good at singing, maybe the song of love is still playing somewhere in the background. Like when you leave the music playing on your phone but the volume is down so you don't realize It's been playing for hours untill you turn the volume up.
I hope I eventually realize, after rolling out of my bed while sleeping, where it was that I was falling.
