It occurred to me that hope is one of those funny things that when transmitted it can be infectious and without it can be detrimental. In a recent teaching session I discussed how African Americans in particular share a DNA of Hope. See when you are locked in the bowels of a boat robbed of all your native land sensibilities all you have is hope. Hope that someone or something is going to save you from what your mind has yet to conceive. Matter of fact the genesis of hope as it relates to African Americans was captured best in the words to the Negro National Anthem, written by James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson. I wonder how many of the suburban kids here in the city that attends James Weldon Johnson Middle School even know of his contribution with this song. However, I digress.
In my many conversations with young people, in particular those from the core of the city, hope has been supplanted by compensation. What I mean by this is that the inner fortitude that hope requires has been replaced with an immediacy that only comes when your perspective is thrown off by a little change in your pocket. See what I hold to be true is that when you lose sight of hope your moral compass becomes off center and you lose sight of the potential of what tomorrow holds. Therefore, you get a rush of the many social ills that plague urban communities. Sarah Palin in many ways as she always does missed the point in terms of “How’s that hope thing working out for ya.” It’s not nor will it ever when you are living for the moment. Every institution within our country is built upon the hope of tomorrow (stock market, church, retirement, etc.).
Over the last few weeks I have seen what hope can do when it is transmitted from parent to child and child to the larger society. It has the ability to perform a visual transformation that not even the best cataract surgeon can complete. It makes what seems impossible possible and the intangible tangible because it breaths a what if into a situation. For way to long many of our communities have silently and secretly allowed the what if to be sucked out. Therefore, opening the door of the immediacy to pressure many of us into things that otherwise we would not have done.
Hope is a buffer between your now and your tomorrow. Hope is a silent prayer for things yet to come. Hope also allows you to breath and only in that breath can you hear that small voice saying to you I got this. Jessie Jackson had it right when he suggested “Keep Hope Alive,” because only in keeping hope alive do we allow ourselves to see another day.
I AM
Irvin PeDro Cohen
And this is my Truth and I AM Sticking with it…
