On Hope and Failing Better
A poem and wisdom from a filmmaker to get you through the waning weeks of August
A special note: Welcome to all you new Briefers and thank you for being here!
I’m so thrilled you are willing to take a mental nap with me (or a grown up digital siesta) a couple times a week. There will be (brief) musings on parenthood, poetry to warm your spirit, film, television, and book recommendations, and other tidbits of joy to give you the boost you need and deserve (without the 3pm caffeine crash!)
So let’s get into it!
The countdown to the end of summer has begun (and depending on what school district your kids attend the clock may have already run down to zero). With the waning days comes a desperate desire to cling to what’s left of the season: sticky mornings and warm walks after dinner, one last splash in the local lake or public pool, a final bite of sweet corn on the cob (preferably piping hot at the Minnesota State Fair with the husks still attached). Summer is a season of hope and possibilities but often it arrives to us without the fanfare we anticipated all Winter and Spring. Life is still life, after all, in June and July and August. What we hope for is the chance to be warm, recharged by nature, to feel alive in the swirls of cool water, to find a bit of sand at the bottom of our bag and forget about the rest of the world…
Summer is a season of hope and possibilities but often it arrives to us without the fanfare we anticipated all Winter and Spring. Life is still life, after all, in June and July and August.
What we get are laundry loads to be folded and dishes to be unloaded, grocery lists to be written and ever-evolving camp carpool routines to be temporarily mastered. By August summer has become a runaway car with brakes that are shot and we are mere passengers, gripping the door handles, holding on for dear life.
Fall (a truly glorious season itself) rushes towards us with all its schoolwork and routine and shortened daylight and reminders of death. I, for one, am feeling a certain familiar desperation that I didn’t fulfill my own “summer hopes” and now the chance to do so is… well, it’s like sand running through my fingertips.
But when I stumbled upon this poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer I was reminded that hope isn’t a season at all… hope is a guide.
Hope isn’t a season at all… Hope is a guide.
What if we let go of that panicked sense of squandered opportunity?
What if we let hope carry us into the next day, week, month, season?
And who is the sister of Hope but Dreams? You may have seen in the news recently that Academy Award-winning director William Friedkin of The French Connection and The Exorcist fame passed away on August 7th. Many movie lovers recognize his iconic work (and those iconic Exorcist stairs) without knowing the man behind the camera… which is why I found the final paragraph of Friedkin’s memoir particularly moving:
“Perhaps I’ll fail again. Maybe next time I’ll fail better.”
Because that feeling of “success” or accomplishment doesn’t always emerge from the depths of life as if on cue… even when you’re a master of cinema and even when you’re an ordinary person who finally manifested the summer you dreamt of all year.
To exist in any season is to hope and fail again and again.
So, here’s to doing both a little better.