Hope

Sixth grade was the first year I had a different teacher for every subject. The English and Reading classrooms were side-by-side and the teachers were good friends. They were also opposites. Not only was one tall and skinny and the other short and soft, but one was a pessimist and the other an optimist. I can still picture them standing side-by-side, explaining to my class the difference in their views of the world and how they get along so well despite, or because, of this difference.

Based on the lesson from sixth grade, the optimist expects the best while the pessimist expects the worst. I am neither always an optimist or always a pessimist, though I think I appear to tend toward optimism. For example, I know I drove my coworkers nuts for over a year by sharing with them how the new application system under development was going to be better than the existing system everyone hated.

My belief that the optimist is the happier person, less prone to depression, has been shaken in recent years. It seems that my optimism leads me on an emotional journey of ups and downs like Kennywood’s Thunderbolt, whereas my pessimism creates a more gentle experience like the Turtle ride.

Hope is another word for the expectation of the best. Hope is a positive and uplifting emotion. But the best often doesn’t happen. The gap between the expected best and reality is filled with negative emotions, the least of which is disappointment.

On the other hand, the worst often doesn’t happen. The gap between the expected worst and reality is filled with positive emotions, perhaps starting with relief.

At one point during my Long COVID journey, I expected that I was going to need to have my gallbladder removed. I was filled with pain and with the fear that my body would not be able to recover well from the surgery because it was spending too much energy on the struggle with Long COVID. As changes to my diet and supplements reduced the pain and test after test showed that my gallbladder was mostly behaving, reality led me step-by-step away from the fear of the surgery and the expectation that it was necessary. The emotional distance between the fear and the relief was small and spread out over time.

At the start of my Long COVID journey, weeks before the doctors agreed to categorize me as Long COVID, I knew I was not going to recover quickly. The months that have followed have been easier to experience as a result of this expectation, and good days that pull my average day closer to normal are thrilling. At first this thrill is moderated by the expectation that Long COVID is called long for a reason.

However, a pattern of good days creates the expectation that the end is in sight. It seems impossible to prevent thoughts like “If today I am strong enough to do ____, then in a week or two I will be able to do ____.” When a week or two passes and not only am I not able to do the second thing, but I have also relapsed enough that I can’t do the first thing, the emotional drop is severe and sudden. Disappointment, depression, hopelessness replaces the thrill.

Finding a third way – realism? – that acknowledges that in most cases something between the worst and the best is the most likely outcome is hard. Hoping for the best at one time and preparing for the worst at another are ingrained habits for me. With the long journey of Long COVID still stretching out before me, perhaps it will give me time to learn this third way….see, I can’t help hoping for the best!

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Feature image credit: Hand by Icon Agent from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)

Optimism v. Pessimism credit: self