About Being a Person

How often do we hope for what we know is hopeless? I'm not looking for a number here, as in exactly how often, just an acknowledgment that we do it. My sense of what it means to be human tells me we all do it. I know I do. Like me hoping my finches will come back to the wreath on the front porch, which hope causes me to delay the moment when I give up and take down the wreath to drop it in the garbage can.

I know the finches are nesting, and do so every year now, somewhere on the east side of the house. That should be enough, I suppose, but it isn't, because I can only hear them. I much prefer them where I can watch the whole life thing, as I did for those 10 years. From nest building to eggs to hatching to flying away. I loved it, even though they made a mess on the wall of the house.

Or like hoping my husband will come back, even for a short visit, when I know that is not possible. Or, in other words, hopeless.

Truly, I don't use up a lot of energy hoping for that one either. But there is something in my gut, or maybe my soul, that does not allow me to give up. Something that tells me it is possible. I suppose it only means that I want to see him--here, where I am, not there, where he is--and whatever forces exist in this universe already know that.

I have never entertained the foolish, if very human, notion that "if he really loved me, he would" come back. I don't even know why I just wrote that, because I have never thought it. Sometimes our own writing can surprise us. Did you know that?

P.S. I have taken the wreath down. It now awaits Thursday's trash pick up.