Hope: A Social Study

Share your story of Hope

Allayna and I are launching a new project. We are calling it Hope: A Social Study. It will be based around the revolutionary changes, simultaneously lasting and ephemeral, brought on by Hope. The footprints it leaves on all of us. Some of these changes are beneficial to us and others, and alternatively, some are harmful. Each of us has a story with a through-line of hope. That experience might have led you to become merely more hopeful, but did not get you what you hoped for. Some hope-oriented experiences might have led you to reach or at least come close to reaching the hoped-for goal.

We hope you will share your own story with us. These tales will run the gamut from devastating, to heartbreaking, to profoundly beautiful. We welcome them all. Hope has been shown to physiologically alter our bodies. Hope is a deeply universal, powerful experience - one that we wish to capture in some way.

Hope transcends time and space – we hope that one day the lover who left us will return, we hope that we will be in some way reunited with our loved ones when we die, we hope that the cancer will shrink. Some of these hopes are but illusory wishes. Where that is the case, are they beneficial or harmful? Feel free to share with us anything you are comfortable to share, but we do hope you will be as truthful, genuine and raw as you can be, as that is the deeper intention behind this project - to hear what truly matters to you.

Now in the later years of my life, I have been harboring a passion, a Hope for Awareness. That is, a hope that I and others will experience the awe and splendor in the world around us. My hope has been that my skill as a physician and surgeon, as a teacher and investigator would benefit people, that is, help people heal overall but also to heal themselves, and what’s more, to work communally, TOGETHER, to heal. I have come to believe that Awareness is a central part of “the good life.” This was true for me as a doctor and is true for all of us. It drives the work I am currently doing and disseminating through my poetry and prose, as well as my floral arrangements and other endeavors, hoping to inspire others to be more attentive and aware of the beauty that exists in all things. My Hope is for awareness, attentiveness, and awe.

Thus, this project was born. We want to hear as many of these stories as you all wish to share. You can submit your stories at my website: www.georgelspaeth.com.

I encourage you to share this post if you would like to contribute in widening our net of potential story-sharers. I have every intention to sit down and read all of these, and open a conversation about how our universal experience of Hope is a beacon that can unite us, and perhaps redirect us in a more fruitful direction. Please offer us your vulnerability in sharing your stories, we are humbled and beyond eager to receive them with empathy, compassion, and sensitivity.

Thank you.

George