I recently read an amazing essay about hope. I'm not even going to attempt to paraphrase for fear of minimizing the message it was meant to convey. I will just leave it that I felt hopeful after I read it. There was one part where the writer told about being in an airport and being approached by a woman asking for money because she claimed that she accidentally flushed her wallet down the toilet. While it seemed exceedingly clear that the woman was lying, the writer eventually relented and gave her money anyway. She didn't have a revelation about why she ultimately decided to, just that the feelings in such a situation are complex.
It made me think about the times since I have started this project that I have walked past people holding signs such as “Out of work, need money” and have chosen not to give anything. I've made different decisions than the writer of the essay did in a similar situation, but the feelings of conflict are similar.
So I'm not sure where I'm going with this, other than that being kind and hopeful can be more complex than one initially realizes. Today, in the spirit of hope in a dire situation, we are sending a check to the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation.
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