Nickel Hope
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"There's an old story about a teenage boy and his best friend, who are kidding around with the first boy's little brother," Edwin said.
"'Watch this,' he whispers to his friend. 'Alfie doesn't know anything about money. He falls for the same trick every time. Hey, Alfie! Come over here a minute!'
"Alfie eagerly trots over. His brother has a nickel and a dime in his hand and holds them out to Alfie. 'Take whichever one you want.' Alfie takes the nickel and runs off.
"His brother snickers. 'See? He does it every time.'
"Later the friend feels sorry for Alfie, takes him aside, and explains: 'See, even though the nickel is bigger, the dime is twice as valuable.'
"'I know that,' says Alfie. 'But I take the dime and the game's over.'"
- Joe Jones by Anne Lamott
I think the smartest people in the world are the most afraid. Such a vast understanding of this world, a true awareness of the great and tiny explosions necessary to sustain life, would turn me into a bundle of nerves. In this Age of Information, a writer could theoretically pen a story about the Inuit in Greenland without having ever stepped foot on an airplane or cracked open a book. I recall Robin William's character in Good Will Hunting when he reminds the genius but naive Matt Damon that while he may spout knowledge, he is without the richness of experience. He is afraid, afraid to experience.
Fear is easily conjured by our imagination, but hope can only be known through experience.
When I write too long in a vacuum, strung out on cold coffee and ramen noodles, I grow irrational. It's not only felt in my writing, but in my toenails and my gut and my earlobes. I sift through the week's headlines and binge on sensational stories from around the globe and I imagine myself being led away in handcuffs or rioting through main street. I make myself nauseous by projecting terror in my future and evil around every corner.
Everyone in the world has fear, not everyone has hope. Nervous is easy; not only are there more ways to die these days, but we know about them. We have identified our assassins and we can watch them coming.
Hope is a choice, not a gift or stroke of dumb luck. Hope is habit born from experience, repeated experience, repeated confrontations with misfortune to be exact. You can't just read about it in a news articles, you have to step away from your laptop and trust a stranger. Sure, there are a million inspiring stories, but inspiration requires a degree of distance; the man on the marble statue. Hope has two scrapped knees and an eye patch and lives in your termite-riddled tree house; she could fall, she should fall, but every morning you look out your window and there Hope is, seven feet in the air, wiggling her toes.
I think my mother paws curiously at my fascination with the morose, as if it reflects some kind of deficiency, when it, in fact, reveals my need for hope. My mother should know best; she has always been my joyful muse whatever the cards in her hand. Grace, she would call it; Nickel hope, Lamott might muse.
My aim in fiction is to give the reader just enough hope to make it through another day. Just enough to want for morning. So often people look to fiction for the quintessential happy ending, as if loose strings should only be wound into tidy bows. Hope is vitamin, not medicine.
I say, write (and look) for the nickel hope. Maybe it's compromise, but in the end, you're richer for it.
Happy Tuesday, Folks.
Yours,
Kris
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