Searching for HOPE

Driving along the backroads of South Jersey which I once did whenever I felt blue, I once heard a song on 88.5 fm radio: Looking for Hope in a Hopeless World. It was not only a beautiful song but it spoke to a condition that afflicts so many of us. We are inundated with bad news all day every day. Mentally ill shooters murder little first graders in their school, angry and disturbed driver kills 'dancing grannies' in A Christmas parade! Every time you turn on the television or open your laptop, you are deafened by the clamor of crime. It is a smorgasbord of misery - crimes against the environment, against humanity, against animals, domestic violence, police killing in traffic stops - everywhere the evidence of evil. How in the world can you face the day?

That song, sung by Marlena Shaw stayed with me over the years, and I was reminded of it when I came across a review in the Sunday New York Times Book Review of the book HOPE, by Jane Goodall with Douglas Abrams. The subtitle is "A Survival Guide for Trying Times." And these are Trying times!

Needless to say I had to buy that book and I have been reading it. It is so helpful. One of the things Jane Goodall reminds me of, on page 53, is the L O N G P E R S P E C T I V E. Jane Goodall was born on April 3, 1934. She was a child of World War II. For any of us acquainted with those times (I was born in 1945 - the end of the war, but because my father was in the navy and my mother worked in the Philadelphia Naval Yard, the war was always with us) World War II and the Holocaust were for many of my generation, the introduction to the depth of man's ability to do evil. We grew up in the threat of nuclear war, which is sadly again with us.

My generation was consoled with a period of prosperity, reform, and therefore, HOPE. Our fathers were in Unions and our families had sufficient income to buy houses. I was fortunate enough to have a mother who loved motherhood, cooking, gardening, and who felt blessed to be financial stable enough to live her dream. In our youth, we baby-boomers, struggled to balance the injustices we perceived in civil rights and gender parity, and we saw some results. By the 1970's our awareness of climate vulnerability and corporate profit weapons such as cigarettes and pesticides as well as the detriments and cruelty in animal agriculture made many of us vegetarians and caused a surge in interest in wellness, jogging became fashionable and bicycling, hiking and project such as rails to trails blossomed.

But something happened and the surge toward greater consciousness and caring got sidetracked into a quest for celebrity fame and greedy wealth. Greed rose its ugly head and the nascent movement towrd efforts for the greater good turned into parasitic billionaires hiding unimaginable wealth in offshore accounts and poisoning the universal mind to get more attention for more profit (facebook).

It is enough to make an aging hippie lose hope, therefore I was immensely grateful for the effort of Douglas Abrams and Jane Goodall to find the time and energy to make arguments for keeping hopeful. Jane Goodall gives us four reasons which I will not list here because you need her explanations and examples to support and contextualize them.

What I will say, is if you are feeling hopeless and filled with despair, listen to Marlene Shaw's song "Looking for Hope in Hopeless World" on YouTube and buy Jane Goodall's book and give yourself a healing balm and reason to hope again - and take a walk. Spring is coming and the fresh green shoots of crocus are already popping up their little hopeful green shoots! After the bluster and slicing snow and wind of the last weekend storm, these balmy days are a great support for Jane Goodall's arguments for hope.

By the way, I became aware of the book via a review in the Sunday New York Times Book Review section sometime over the summer. I had sworn off buying any more books, but I am glad I made the exception and bought this one. It took me awhile to get around to reading it, stuck midway through the tall tower of books- to-be-read that sits on my coffee table, but I am so happy that I got to it now and just in time because Jane Goodall's Birthday is April 3, so I can read it with a happy birthday in mind!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO A TRUE HERO AND A MODEL FOR HOPE!

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