Hope, No Thank You

Photo by Philipp Torres @phito

Hope, No Thank You

Have you noticed,

no one seems to hope for what they have.

Yes, read that again slowly.

No one seems to hope for what they have.

Hope is a mortgage.

It’s mortgaging off the present

for some possible future.

Hopeful people do not

hope for what they have,

instead they hope for

some possible thing in

the future.

They pass up on what they have now,

blind to all the wonder it contains.

May you hope for

what you have now, beg for it.

May, what you have now,

never be mortgaged,

but treasured.

May you return to the now, now,

and may you invest in the currency 

of gratefulness. That willingness to be

awed, floored, confused and

devastated by the epic

mysteriousness of ordinary things.

Hope does not notice the wonder

of a flower opening, the sun rising.

It is not curious about unseen

atoms in a cumulonimbus cloud,

it never asks the question,

“Can soap be dirty?”

May you be drawn to the mystery

of what lies in the present tense

and may you abandon all hope

for landfills of treasure scattered

under the rubbish of the ordinary.

May you find the glitter of uncertainty

in the boulders of what you were sure of.

Hope, no thank you very much!