Hope is a cream that you rub on your eyeballs every morning.

(Pre-Script: This post will burst wide open with hope and possibility when paired with the song, "Only Hope," #49 on the playlist...so please stop whatever you are doing, go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait, in hopeful expectation...) (...still waiting...)

I just turned on the TV and heard, "3 convenience stores robbed in an hour. We'll tell you why police think teenagers were involved, on the news at 10."

Blink

Blink

Um, do you think maybe they think teenagers were involved because three convenience stores were robbed in an hour? Because I dunno, if I hear that three convenience stores were robbed in an hour, I just assume that teenagers are involved, that just reeks of "Teenagers-Were-Probably-Involved-Majorly-Obvious-Sauce" to me...with a little Clue Phone Spice peppered all over it, too. Or maybe a lot of Clue Phone Spice peppered all over it. I hate stealing, it is just so "I am desperate and hopeless beyond repair" It is just so Jean Val Jean, 24601, "my family will die unless I bring them this loaf of bread"* dramatic. But why do these kids feel that in their less than 20 years of life in one of the richest parts of the world they have reached a point of such hopelessness? Or are they just bored, and want to somehow feel alive again, mixed with immaturity that makes them not care who else gets hurt in their quest for fun and adrenaline? Or were they just craving chips and Slurpee's? Mixed with the immaturity yada yada I just mentioned two sentences ago?
Everything wants to hang on to it's own life. Everything wants to save it. After the convenience store news story, I just swatted a bug that was resting calmly on the wall, and just before the fly swatter could make contact with it's little intrusive body, that perfectly still probably sleeping critter started flying erratically, just out of fly swatter reach, and sure enough, it saved it's own life. I have no idea where it ended up. It's probably like, on my back, or something, about to suck my blood as I write this, and I have no idea, and I am making myself paranoid because of the audacity of even an almost microscopic insect.

Blink.

Okay, so it was a little bigger than almost microscopic, but you see my point...don't you? Some points are not as obvious as I think they are. Some are more so. I am not always good at judging which is which. According to the evening news, neither are newscasters, sometimes, at least.

We are not meant to live without hope. Without hope, we perish. With hope, sometimes we perish anyway. Without hope, we perish while we should be living, though, and that's the worst.

-XOXO,

*From the musical "Les Miserables," which my friend Gina and I were obsessed with in High School, and my friends Scott and Heather and I were obsessed with after High School.