The Audacity to Hope: Letters to You
Dear you—
You brought this book up in passing the first day we met, and it stuck with me ever since, so much so that I had to pick it up and read it myself for the first time.
I didn’t get it at first, the appeal of it, but I think I do now.
A friend of mine recently mentioned to me the “audacity to hope,” that we as humans have. That each day, we get up, convincing ourselves that today will be better, even if, maybe it won’t actually be. That we continue persisting—hoping—and striving after some innocent part of us, to keep it alive, to nurture it. To pursue it, relentlessly.
In the book, Holden’s audacity to hope, wilts and is smothered early on. There is a constant tension—a grief—in him feeling so much, and not knowing where to put it. He is holding so much, and doesn’t know how or where to set it down. And he has to go away, for a time, to hopefully get that back, and learn how to be—how to authentically be—in a world hell-bent on keeping him from himself.
There is a sorrow I feel in your own going away. But also my own, “audacity to hope”.
That you will find yourself. Be at peace with yourself. That you will come to know that you can set whatever you need to down, in order to be yourself. To return to yourself. To the you that was slowly suffocated, and also began to wilt away. That you will find a way to allow breath to be breathed into seemingly dead and dying things. That you will awaken back to yourself, and embrace you with tenderness, care, compassion, and love. That you will let time heal, but you will not let it cause you to forget.
There are other audacities to hope, that I will keep for myself, but will wish with all my heart, reaches you even in the silence.
I hope you whisper you own audacities to hope, in this silence, too—and that they reach me back here, in my own wilting and striving, and hoping.
—Love, me