(West Publishing. The book in this photo began at Shepard’s/McGraw-Hill. Thomson Reuters West purchased the rights and began publishing it a couple of decades ago, where the book is now in its Third Edition.)
I intended to write an article about one of the many lawsuits filed against the regime. I wanted to explain the Harvard lawsuit in particular after rooting through the electronic Court file of that federal case on PACER. Recently though I have had some brushes with hope.
Articles about lawsuits filed against the regime, including Harvard's federal case, will have to wait for another time. I want to write about hope today.
"The hope I’m interested in is about broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act."--Rebecca Solnit
The surest definition of hope that I have come across, comes from Rebecca Solnit. She distinguishes it from optimism. Optimism is like pessimism, she observes: Both optimism and pessimism are certain of the outcome and both expect that you and I will not do much in the process, if we do anything. Optimism imagines a certain and happy outcome pretty much in spite of ourselves; pessimism always sees a sad outcome regardless of what action we take.
Hope, in contrast, is uncertain. We do not know what is going to happen, but we hope for the best knowing that it is an uncertain outcome. "It’s the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand. We may not, in fact, know them afterward either, but they matter all the same, and history is full of people whose influence was most powerful after they were gone," she wrote.
And she is right. I have seen this in my own life. I should tell you first that I am not by nature a hopeful person. If anything, I struggle with hoping for a good result. I am more of a pessimist, I suppose, near-certain of a bad result more often than not.
That said, I want to emphasize the uncertainty of hope. We do not necessarily know what good will come until it does.
One of my life's desires has been to write a book. One of my idols, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., hoped to write a book before he was 40. He succeeded. I hoped to write a book as well, and before I turned 40 would be just fine with me.
At this point, I have written four of them, and many articles, but that is not the point here. Instead, I would like to tell you briefly how my first book came to me out of the blue.
My story began when I suggested a book topic to a publisher. I was very interested in the topic and had a lot of experience with it in my law practice. So I sent the publisher a letter suggesting the topic for a book. I did not suggest an author, and I certainly did not suggest me. I suggested a book on the topic, because I thought the topic was so interesting.
I was at home for some reason instead of being at work as was usual with me, especially on a weekday which is when this incident happened that I am about to relate to you. At that time, I was usually at the office seven days a week anyway.
While I was home during the day on a weekday, I received a telephone call from an editor in Colorado who worked at Shepard's/McGraw-Hill, which is where I had sent my idea for a book topic. She liked the topic and asked me to write the book and that was why she called; she became my first editor.
I did not know that my hope to write a book would come true that day. I did not know what waited for me around the corner, so to speak. I could not see into the future.
Not many people can. But some can, I think.
"Hope is the thing with feathers on it."--Emily Dickinson
Two people expressed their appreciation of hope in an Author's Guild 'webinar' in 2024: Sherrilyn Ifill and Dr. Ruth Simmons. Here is a link to the Author's Guild recording where you can listen to them for yourself:
https://authorsguild.org/resource/2024-wit-literary-festival-sherrilyn-ifill-and-ruth-simmons/
I suggest starting at about 1:10 into the program, and listen for the last 12 minutes or so.
Dr. Simmons was President of Brown, Smith, and Prairie View A&M. As a young Black girl growing up in the Jim Crow era, she said that at 16 she had no idea that the kind of life that was created for her was not the life she would live later on. She could not see it at age 16; how could she, she asked. But, she said, there were people who could see that future and who hoped for it.
Sherrilyn Ifill is a great lawyer and a personal hero of mine. She said that her own idols included Thurgood Marshall, who set out to dismantle Jim Crow in 1935. She asked how people like him could possibly know that their hope would succeed; but they did hope and they did succeed.
"The cessation of breathing in his life was merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit; he died when he lost hope."--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The reason I put aside my ideas for an article about the lawsuits filed against the regime is hope. Since January, like a lot of people, I became more depressed every day.
Then I re-acquainted myself with hope.
Things do not seem certain to me now that were uncertain before, but they certainly seem possible. And that, as they say, has made all the difference.
"Our answer is the world's hope. It is to rely on youth, not a time of life but a state of mind."--Senator Robert F. Kennedy (the real RFK).
Hang in there. We can do this together. Whether we like it or not, we're in this together. And to borrow a closing thought from Red Green, "Remember, I'm pulling for you."