hope.

Hope. What is hope? Is it the "thing with feathers/That perches in the soul", as Emily Dickinson wrote? Is it an empty campaign slogan used by a Presidential candidate? I like a quote from author Barbara Kingsolver, that goes "The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof." But living inside that hope is very hard. I know the medical side of it. I know the clinical terms, am familiar with the statistics. And yes, we've all heard statistics are just numbers, blah blah blah....and to a certain extent, that's true. But there's also that cold hard truth of the matter. The black and white words written in the medical chart that detail the cancer. The doctor's sobering prognosis. Hope takes on a different meaning, you apply it to different things. I've blogged about this before; I struggle with hope. But sometimes, that's all you have.