Between hope and emptiness

Early this morning the sky was a turquoise ocean with waves of gold rimmed clouds made clearer by the cold. The dogs had noticed the turning of nature's gaze toward spring, and sniffed eagerly at the air, as though one could smell the turning of the light. "That's what hope looks like," I said to my walking partner. She pointed to the smokey sky further away, where it seemed to me that hope was blurred by colors as yet uncertain. It wasn't all as I had thought.

Each byte of morning news reminded me of that blurred sky. Was I simply naive to believe that public service could be a noble thing? To watch actors on the stage of today's political reality is to feel morally empty. Was the system really so rife with people of such extraordinary callousness toward their fellow human beings? Was trust gone, and, worst of all, was the theater taking place before us a manifestation of ourselves?

I sipped my coffee, begging for a caffeine kick out of emptiness. Familiar voices played in my head. Father's first: "Wake up, girl, nothing's changed - take care of your own."  On the other end of the spectrum were the many other voices who insisted that I should not waste time deluding myself: "Stop believing in something that doesn't work, girl - the whole system needs to be razed to the ground so that we can start anew." All voices left me feeling empty. The consequences of either argument seemed to run contrary to that turquoise sky of hope, with its clouds of painstaking incremental never-ending change. One step after the next, and the next.