I once had a boss who loved to use the phrase “Hope is not a strategy” to shut down coworkers during status meetings. If a team member used the word “hope,” as in “we hope this new campaign will…” or “we hope the new pricing will…,” he would interrupt with, “Hope is not a strategy.”
While I never contradicted him on this point in the meetings, I always did it in my mind.
Hope, I believe, is the actual foundation for all strategies. Whatever any strategy is, it MUST begin with hope; otherwise, what are we even doing? We can’t KNOW our strategies will have our imagined outcome. Hope is where we begin.
Whenever I plant something in my garden, be it vegetable, fruit, or flower, I hope it will grow. I can put it in the best soil, I can make sure the soil quality is good, the sun exposure is right and hydration are adequate for the particular plant, but hope is where we start. No matter the steps I take to ensure a successful growth season, I still have to start and end with hope.
In gardening, hope is a strategy.
As beekeepers, my husband and I do everything we know to do to ensure our bees are happy and healthy. But, as we say in the beekeeping culture, bees do what they want. If something is not right with their environment, the entire colony may decide to abscond to places unknown; leaving the beekeeper to wonder what happened. They may start to feel a little crowded, so the queen and a portion of the colony will take off in a swarm, leaving the remaining bees to rebuild and requeen themselves. Even when we feel we’ve done everything right, what we have left is hope.
In beekeeping, hope is a strategy.
Whenever I watch my grandsons play baseball, I watch with equal parts confidence and hope. I know they know what to do when they step on the plate or the mound. They have all been practicing for years, their brains are aware of the process, their bodies are trained for the movements. I am confident in their abilities. But maybe they woke up not feeling well today, or face a pitcher they’ve never seen. Spring winds in Texas and Oklahoma (where they all live) can be brutal and cause balls to fly differently. Sometimes it is just an off day. This is where hope plays a big part in our baseball loving lives, theirs, their parents, and mine.
In baseball, hope is a strategy.
I like to cook sourdough bread and sometimes the loaves turn out great and sometimes they fall flat, even though I follow all the best practices for sourdough baking. In the end, I just have to put the loaves in the oven and hope they turn out. Making jam comes with similar problems. No matter how closely I follow the teaching of my mother and grandmother, sometimes the jam just will not set, or the jars will not seal. I just have to follow the process and hope.
I keep chickens, occasionally one just dies for no apparent reason. Sometimes, one will go broody and sit on a clutch of eggs. After the 21-day gestation period we either have a fully hatched clutch, a partially hatched clutch, or no hatches at all. Sometimes the chicks survive to adulthood; sometimes they are crushed under their mothers, eaten by snakes or just succumb to failure to thrive syndrome. When I see a hen go broody, I am filled with equal parts dread and hope.
In all of life, hope is a strategy.
I’ve been working on a strategy for managing my medically induced heart failure since my diagnosis in 2014. I quit drinking, I upped my exercise, I changed my already generally healthy diet to a drastically healthy plant-based diet. I practice yoga daily, I meditate and avoid stress. I moved from a chaotic out-of-control job (with the boss referenced above), to a very low-key job and then just recently retired. I now spend my days writing, gardening, beekeeping, cooking and spending every minute I can with my three dogs and Charles, the love of my life.
Two years ago (ten years after my first symptom), I had open heart surgery to replace a leaky aortic valve. I have been told by medical professionals, that my healthy lifestyle strategy is what slowed the progression of the disease and allowed me to avoid surgery for 10 years. A few months post surgery, it became apparent that they should have gone ahead and repaired the second leaky valve. So, a year later, I underwent a procedure to repair the mitral valve.
Six months after the mitral repair, my symptoms went from improved to worse than they were before. This is where I am now. I am short of breath with any kind of exertion, although I continue to push myself. In spite of doubling my diuretics, I have undergone a procedure called a thoracentesis four times since December to remove liters of fluid from around my lungs so I can breathe better. I think another one is in my near future.
I have seen many specialists, but my current team is comprised of my cardiologist and a pulmonologist who specializes in the relationship between the heart and lungs. My team is excited by the opportunity to investigate and discover what is going on with me. If 1 + 1 = 2, they say, I should be living my best life right now. But, in my case 1 + 1 is not equal to 2 and the pressure inside my pulmonary system is not adding up. They have recently decided that a hole in my heart may be the culprit to my current issues. This is hole was created by the surgeon for the insertion of the mitral value clip repair. Normally, this hole repairs itself during recovery and does not become an issue. But, in the words of my cardiologist, “we sometimes forget that you are not the normal patient.”
So, one month from today, I will undergo a procedure to repair the hole. The repair process is the same as that used on babies with congenital birth defects. Informally called a “button procedure” the atrial septal defect repair involves the placing of a plug in the hole to which, hopefully, my heart tissue will adhere, effectively buttoning up the problem. Hopefully, the repair will be successful and my heart / lung pressure will equalize. If it does, I should feel better almost immediately. That is our hope.
The “button” which will be inserted into the hole in my heart.
I’m concerned that this is just another guess because the hole has been there six months and they originally said it shouldn’t cause a problem. Are they now just grasping at straws, or are they on the right track? Is this the answer to my prayers, or another expensive path to disappointment?
All I know is, I have done all the things that are within my power to do, and have prayed for the things that are not within my power to do. I am as healthy as I can be, aside from this eventually fatal heart failure. I am, in fact, healthier than many people who don’t have heart failure. I will continue with the strategy of eating right, exercising, and avoiding stress. But, I must include hope in my strategy.
For now, I will collaborate with the doctors, attend the appointments, take the medicine, undergo the procedures, eat mass quantities of vegetables, and deprive myself of cheese. But on top of all that, I will continue to hope.
In dealing with serious illness, hope is a strategy. Sometimes it is the only strategy we have.
Nobody can take away my hope.
