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Success or Hope

I am one of the vanishing breed of folks who still read newspapers.  My daughters and most students I know never touch the things.  They get all their news online.  I also am one of those people who always buy and read the local newspaper wherever I travel.  In fact, I really like landing in a little town somewhere and reading their local paper.  I read sports pages with names I never will know.  I read about church events, social occasions, and obituaries.  I can feel sad for someone’s tragic or unexpected death even though I have no connection.

I like my local paper, too.  Even though it is not as good as it was even ten years ago when I moved to town, I hate missing a day’s news.  Very recently I came across something in the sports section of the paper.  It is well known that Cleveland is a fanatical city about football.  The beloved football team, the Browns, have been pretty terrible for years now…but the faithful remain faithful.  Apparently reality has no place in the mind of a fanatic football fan.

This particular day the reporters were doing articles on some news hired folks the Browns have enlisted. In making the case for why this move would probably work in turning around fortunes, an owner of some other football team was quoted.  

The owner said something to the effect that a professional football team is either selling success or hope!  That perspective struck a cord in me.  I realized it was a pretty savvy insight.  And I realized it also had to do with more than just football.

Success and hope is an interesting pair of concepts.  In some real way they are both describing a stance or attitude in the present moment that attempts to forecast something for the future moment.  It might not be a bad way to look at life.

Success is easy to understand as an attitude.  If today I am a winner, if I have my act together, if the stars are all lining up perfectly, that can be a good predictor of tomorrow’s success, too.  Our English language is full of sayings that seem to underscore this: “the rich get richer,” for example comes to mind.  

But there is a significant portion of people in the world who do not feel successful, just as there are many professional football teams deemed unsuccessful.  If we are not successful, how can we “sell” our team or ourselves?  Hope!  If I am not successful, then perhaps I can find a way to create hope.  Hope is what I can do today that tomorrow might be different.

My friend is fond of saying craziness is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result.  That is craziness and not hope!  And that is easy to apply to life.  Too many of us live lives that are crazy.  And probably not too many crazy lives are deemed successful.

A spiritual insight suggests that we re-visit the meaning of hope.  All too often, hope means waiting today for something different tomorrow.  The spiritual insight suggests that we switch verbs for hope.  Instead of simply defining hope as “waiting,” let’s redefine hope and make it “doing.”

Authentic hope often is doing something today that may well make tomorrow different.  For example, if I decide my life can be more successful---more meaningful---it probably is not sufficient to wait all day and all night “hoping” tomorrow will come with more meaning.

To the contrary, what about grounding hope in a commitment to a particular spiritual discipline?  Maybe I could start praying in order to feel connected to God, instead of merely “hoping” that I might become connected.

Lord, let me succeed.  And if not yet, give me the courage to begin doing something to create real hope.

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