Hope

Like most people, I have a couple of little artifacts I keep in my office; pictures of family and friends, a cheap little dog figurine in a graduation cap - a gift from one of my NCO Academy classes. The first guitar I ever had…no strings and a warped neck. I really have to let that one go. My mom’s old xylophone, folded up and leaning against a window sill that’s crowded with awards and mementos from a military career long over. I should let some of that stuff go too. Nobody ever sees these things but me and this cramped little space hardly supports all of the junk in it. I’m sure as time goes by, I will start to part ways with some of these things, save one…A little rock that sits on my desk with the word, Hope inscribed on it. It sat on Terri's dresser (which is also now in my office) among the myriad of things she had on there. I remember unboxing it almost two years ago and I knew exactly where it needed to go.

It’s a cheap, little trinket, really; one of those items you find on the dollar shelf at places like Home Goods that you throw on a bookshelf or in a bowel that sits on your living room table to make things appear more homey. Still, I remember glancing at that little rock from time to time, especially throughout all the stressful moments during Terri's battle with cancer. I’d pass by it every day, kind of like I do now, without really thinking about it. But for some reason, the word would stick in my head and you know what? I’d feel the slightest bit better. Weird, right? Not really.

Hope is a lot things to a lot of people. A longing or desire for something better, maybe? Hope is part of the promise people make to each other on their wedding day. It is sandwiched between the fear and joy of pregnancy and the same fear and joy when that child enters the world. It is infused with the anxious momentum of a World Series or the Super Bowl. It is part of the nervous expectation of a job interview or maybe the period of time between asking for that first date and hearing the answer. In the unspeakably tense minutes and hours you sit in the hospital waiting room while someone you love goes through surgery, hope hovers off in the distance. It dances around the coin that you use to scratch off the numbers on a lottery ticket.

But hope is only as strong as the faith behind it. And the difference between hope and faith is action. We can wish for things all day but nothing is going to get us closer to what we desire without the willingness to go after it. Let’s use the lottery scenario. When we were very young, Terri and I used to send in the Publisher’s Clearing House thing every year. For those of you who don’t know, it was a scam to sell magazine subscriptions. Basically, you could win a stupid amount of money “for life” and the commercials depicted average people winning millions of dollars. We’d faithfully send in our ticket along with a subscription or two and then giddily discuss how we were going to spend all that money. We talked about buying a nice home in Hyde Park, being close to everyone we love. Private schools for children not yet born, that kind of thing. It was a nice way to spend a Sunday morning in our tiny apartment while we sipped coffee and listened to jazz.

What I should have been doing was working hard to advance my career and education. I figured it out eventually. Like I said, hope is rather empty without action. Something I try to impart on all of our students here at the dojo is that if the ability to defend themselves is one of the main reasons for training here, they need to put in the sweat and the reps. You can’t just come to the dojo once or twice a week and hope that the bits and pieces of knowledge you acquire will miraculously appear when you need them. This is one of the main reasons I will never teach a “self-defense” class, but I digress. In essence, you have to train hard enough and long enough to know that you can use these skills if the situation arises. Not that you should walk down the street with your chest puffed out thinking you can take anybody on. I’ve known people like that. They probably still send in subscriptions to Publishers’ Clearing House.

My favorite line from the movie, Shawshank Redemption: “Hope is a good thing.” I’ve seen people who have absolutely no hope in anything or anyone and their lives are truly miserable. I've had the honor of working with soldiers who returned from war without all of their limbs, but with the determination to keep moving forward, knowing of the tremendous obstacles ahead. That's hope. I have met and loved people with a terminal illness who not only clung to hope, but exuded it every day no matter how many tubes were coming out of their body. That’s because they knew, beyond a shadow of doubt where they were heading. They didn’t just hope; they knew. That’s faith.

Hope is the beginning of faith. Faith, is hope in action.

Dave Magliano

Tatsu Dojo

Jissenkan Budo

Dojo Cho