After vacation ends, we slip back into routine. Behind us lie days of sunshine, new places explored, trips and walks and pool dives and camping surprises. Now we return to ordinary life, and that electric charge that colored our time away seems to fade. So let's put nostalgia aside and look forward. Let's discover together how to bring a little sunshine into the autumn and winter days ahead.
I think there's one ingredient we've mostly forgotten, one we've set aside, that could help us beat the monotony of sameness—work, school, cooking, the usual round. That ingredient is hope.
I don't mean to preach about this virtue that has kept humanity upright since the beginning. Others have done that far better than I could.
I only want to discover the precious gifts that flow from it.
Hope sets every action and every project in motion. Without it, we coast with the engine off.
Hope floods a family with festive color—grandparents and grandchildren, mother and father alike. You feel it at once in the way you're welcomed: in the fundamental optimism, in whether the eyes that look at you are lit with desire to live, in whether even the clutter and confusion speak of joyful vitality.
Hope transforms dark moments and great trials into ground for growth, into fields where we can fight. Who among us has not felt the thin, barely audible voice of hope, precisely when we've been tempted to give up, to say "I'll never make it," to sink into sad surrender?
Hope can be contagious. We've all felt it: we lift our heads, we shrink our sorrows, simply by coming near someone who has been tested far more deeply than we have—someone who shows us an unthinkable strength and courage. "If he (or she) can stand with such dignity, why not me? Why not try to reach that place, to take him as my example?" A girl told me not long ago: "When I'm down, I think of E., and that helps me pull myself out."
Hope, finally, makes us able to smile. "Why don't you laugh?" a four-year-old boy asked his mother, who was trapped in endless sorrow over her disabled daughter's slow progress. We are all so grateful when we meet someone—at a meeting, a doctor's visit, an office—who welcomes us with a smile. May the smile of hope dwell in each of us.
This is the note Mariangela wrote to thank those who supported her at the 2002 "Woman of the Year" Award.