The Last String of Hope

How to Be Happy (When You Are Not) - Part One

Welcome to the first part of the How to Be Happy (When You Are Not) Series! In this first installment, we will be discussing hope. What it means to hope and why it’s so important as the first step towards happiness.

Dear Reader,

There’s a painting called Hope that I want to tell you about today.

‘Hope’ - George Frederic Watts

‘Hope’ is an oil painting by George Frederic Watts. He painted it in 1886, and the most famous version of the painting hangs in Tate Britain, London.

It’s a painting of a woman sitting on a globe, blindfolded, holding onto a lyre with only one string remaining.

This painting is widely regarded as a symbol of hope. That even when almost all is lost, there’s still a note remaining, a single string left to hold onto.

I hadn’t seen this painting until a few days ago, while I was researching the feeling of hope.

When I first looked at the woman in the painting, my heart clenched. It was as if I was looking into a mirror. I could see myself in this blindfolded woman, still holding onto the very last string of hope.

I’d never really understood what it means to be touched by a painting until I saw this one.

Yet this painting, that was painted more than a hundred years ago, spoke to me. It looked to me like it had been created just for my eyes.

Hope has never been something bright or cheerful for me, like it’s mostly advertised. This painting with its dark, muted colors spoke to me.

I can see the woman’s grief in this painting. I can feel my own grief in it. I can also see how she held onto that one last string, because that’s how I’ve felt too.

This painting is full of despair, yet it is also about holding onto hope for dear life. It acknowledges the pain of losing all, yet still mustering up the courage to move forward.

I think this is what most people feel in moments of despair. The strongest people are those who choose to hold onto that one remaining string on the lyre.

Even though they are blindfolded and cannot see what’s ahead of them in life. And these are the people that open up their lives to happiness. Because without hope, there’s no basis for happiness.

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My Strained Relationship with Hope

Let me be honest - I’ve been always opposed to the feeling of hope. I think hope is very much glamorized as a sunny positive vibe, when in fact, hope is a really difficult feeling to hold onto.

Hope means wishing for something that may not happen in the future. And that uncertainty isn’t easy to deal with. What if hope turns out to be false, empty, and broken? Hope means trusting the process. And frankly, that’s a hard thing to do.

The way I see it, hope is a fragile crystal ball. You cradle this crystal ball in your hands like a baby, looking at a mirage that might come into fruition. The crystal ball could be wrong, or worse it could slip from your fingers and shatter into a million pieces as it unites with the floor.

Then all you’re left with is the broken pieces of what could have been.

But then again no matter how much you bury hope deep into the darkest corners of your mind, it still sparkles like dim stars against the dark sky. Because hope is stubborn like that.

I’ve never been an overly optimistic person. I think over the years, I’ve designed myself to protect from disappointment. I don’t have to brace myself for failure of expectations to come true, if I already tell myself that nothing positive is coming anyway. You could call it a self-defense mechanism, I suppose.

But hope is a stupidly stubborn feeling. It creeps into the little nooks and crannies of your defense. In your darkest moments it becomes a beacon of light, as much as you want to shut it out. It becomes brighter and brighter, seeping into the blindfold of despair.

The painting reminded me that I wasn’t the only one who was ever forced to cling onto the last strand of hope. And it made me think back to my own story.

When I was first told I had breast cancer, I went into my usual self-dense mechanism.

It was the end for me. I was dead sure that this was it. I was prepared to say goodbye.

But then hope stepped in. At first it was the tiniest bit of speck of light, creeping under the blindfold across my eyes. It didn’t do much in the darkest moments of my life. I was feeling my way around blindly. But I was still walking.

While looking at the painting of the woman on the globe, I noticed her hair was also braided into the lyre. It wasn’t just she who was holding onto that last string of hope, but hope was also bound to her. It was sown into her very being. And I think that’s what hope is. Hope isn’t something you construct out of nothing, instead hope finds you itself. It is ingrained in our very being.

So maybe I wasn’t as hopeless as I thought myself to be. Because if I was truly hopeless, I would have refused to move on. I would have refused treatment. So as much as I tell myself that I didn’t hope, I did in fact hope. And even when I didn’t want to hope, hope itself held onto me, not letting go.

With each step that led me towards recovery, my hope brightened. It went from a dim to a bright light by the end of my treatment.

Hope became the very foundation of moving forward and finding happiness once more.

But my story isn’t the only one of holding onto hope. Long before cancer, I had read about someone who faced an unimaginable trial - yet she held onto hope fiercely and became the very face of resilience.

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Bethany’s Story of Hope & Resilience

In the early 2000s, when our family had a subscription for the Readers Digest, I came across the story of Bethany Hamilton, the professional surfer who lost her arm in a shark attack.

Bethany Hamilton - Shark Attack Survivor

It was Halloween morning, 2003. Bethany was lying on her surf board, her arm trailing in the water, when a 14 foot tiger shark bit her arm off. She hadn’t seen the shark, and started losing blood rapidly. In her own words, she didn’t feel pain but pressure.

Despite the situation, Bethany remained calm. Her best friend’s father who was nearby used quick thinking and made a tourniquet out of her surf board’s leash.

Bethany survived what could have easily been a fatal accident. Not only did she survive, a few weeks later after surgery, she was back in the water. She’s still a professional surfer. She was only 13 years old when the shark attacked her.

What’s remarkable in this story is that Bethany didn’t give up on her dreams. She doesn’t have an arm, yet she still surfs to this day. Professionally. She still pursued her passion in a sport which is difficult with two arms to say the least, yet she continues to do it with one arm.

Bethany is a story of not only resilience, but hope. Having hope means you believe in the future, in a good out come.

After reading Bethany’s story so many years ago, I often used to think if I was in Bethany’s place, would I have had her courage, resilience and hope? She didn’t give up. She used hope as the stepping ladder to a brighter future.

I used to think if I was in her place, I would have given up and died on the spot. That’s the little amount of confidence I had in myself.

And even if I had survived in a shark attack like hers, would I have found the courage, the hope, the resilience to move on as Bethany did?

I used to think to myself no. Because I was and have always been pessimistic. A quitter. A person that easily gives up, because the fear of things not turning out is greater than the power of hope.

I used to think there was no way I would come out of the situation like Bethany did.

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Breaking Self-Beliefs

But many years later, I was diagnosed with cancer. I was faced with a choice - give up or choose hope.

I tried my best not to choose hope. What’s funny though is that in the end hope chose me itself. Or maybe it was a matter of both choosing each other. I was like a toddler throwing a tantrum, kicking and screaming. Trying my best to let go of hope. But hope, it held on to me, until I finally succumbed, and began moving forward, choosing hope over despair.

It no longer mattered whether my hope came true or not. The thing that mattered was it was something to hold onto, a rope to guide me through the hardest time of my life. Hope isn’t the end result. Hope is the path that we walk on to reach to the other side.

So why did I choose hope as the first ingredient of being happy, when I have such mixed feelings regarding it? Because I think it lays the very foundation of being happy. It is the very first ray of sunshine, when you’re trapped in darkness.

Sure, our hopes may come true or not. That doesn’t matter. What matters is believing that there could be goodness written in the future for us, which is what helps us move on.

I’m a cancer survivor now. But there’s always going to be a fear around the uncertainty. Recurrence is a fact, one that many do not escape. This is where hope steps in. I don’t know what’s written in the future, but I can fiercely hope that whatever remaining life I have, is a good one.

Do you know what all three women in this essay have in common? Holding onto hope and being held on by hope. Bethany held onto hope in the ocean. The woman in the painting holds onto her lyre, even though she is blindfolded. And I held onto the tiniest spark of hope through cancer, even though I swore I didn’t want to.

So at the end of the day maybe hope isn’t something we entirely choose ourselves. Maybe hope also chooses us. And maybe, dear reader, it will choose you when you need it the most, and I hope you will also hold on to it with all your might.

Sincerely,

Wajeeha

What does hope mean to you? Tell me in the comments below. 💗