Something bout Hope

A musing about hope. The belief things can get better and hope in positive thinking is something we all can do.  True too is we can choose how we let circumstances affect us.  Yes, it’s not easy to always be reaching for the light and not let the darkness overwhelm.

This song theme came to me on a 911 anniversary eve a few years ago after a challenging parenting day. It came to me emotional charged in that way I suppose. Or so I thought, then…  

The Summer of 2018 I was lying on the lawn at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Pops, with my wife discussing the coming week. I mentioned I was bringing the acoustic piece into friend and gifted drummer Greg Conroy’s creative space which is a wonderful old church sanctuary. While I mentioned the plan, I looked up in the sky and there appeared an H in the clouds. I snapped a picture and immediately focused her sight on the horizon and it was gone. An omen?

A couple days later I ran the track by Greg at the Sanctuary. After listening to it twice, he just played on it.   While listening to playback Greg’s wife Ewa came through. Interested, in what she was hearing I shared with her about where the song came from. Its message and about looking up into the sky on the Tanglewood horizon and seeing the H in the clouds.   I was taking back when tears came to her eyes and she said she truly felt and knew its meaning. Followed by her wanting to share its message with her girls.  The young addicted mothers dealing with recovery she helps as a psychiatric nurse practitioner.

A chance interaction around my composition at an intersection of the human condition that’s it right?

I thought that was it. Then a couple days later I’m thinking of the song while out on a bike ride (I’m an avid cyclist). That day I end up rerouting due to road construction.  My detour lands me at the intersection of a road almost diagonally across the street from the former home of Jim Alsbaugh. Jim was a wonderful teacher who many years ago taught our daughter with learning disabilities to read.   Jim didn’t give up on her and over two years changed the trajectory of our daughter’s educational path and all of our lives. Tragically Jim took his own life due to depression in 2017. 

A few days later I’m back on the bike without a set route and Something Bout Hope is cycling in my head. I’m riding along at 24 miles an hour and overcome with emotion as I realize in that moment, I’m on the road that that lands me at Jim’s house.  The true meaning of the song comes to me in a tangled paradox. The person that gave us hope lost hope…  

Interesting as I reflect on the meaning of Something bout Hope beyond the connection paradox with dear Jim. The fact is it takes work. The fact is 75% of marriages fail when there is a disabled child involved in the calculus. And for far too many, escapisms in varied forms of alcohol and drug addiction, indiscretions and abhorrent behaviors are a path.  I muse and embrace, I‘m not divorced, a serial abuser, substance abuser or alcoholic. 

Something bout Hope is that we all have the capacity to navigate the dark wood. Positive thinking, exercise and meditation are a path for me. One may argue a choice.  The paradox piled on paradox is:  the person who gave me hope, lost hope.   Or as one dear friend of Jim’s who knew of his struggle with depression intimately, upon hearing my Something Bout Hope story said: he had no choice. I muse, did he?

Finally, the song is forever dedicated to Jim Alsbaugh an extraordinary educator and philosopher man with the most awesome beard who gave us hope.

-Steve

March of Covid Winter 21'