Hope isn't a dangerous thing

Every time I hear of more job losses, or I see more reports of a failing economy, I think back to when I was a kid, and I had dreams of being a best-selling book author by the age of 23. Or I was going to make enough money to buy the Mets and turn them into the Yankees, and spend my senior years in a box by the dugout, with my feet up on the orange Shea Stadium railing, admiring my World Series rings as they glistened in the Queens sunshine.

I was going to make enough money and give it to my brother, the scientist, so he could find a cure for my mother's obsessive behavior. I was going to buy a big house and have round-the-clock nursing care that would give her the relief and the medication she needed. And she would go along with it, of course, because this was only a dream.

Or maybe I was going to be president and run in the 2004 election, as an independent. I was going to get elected as the youngest president ever and solve everybody's problems, because I was independent.

I was going do it without the influence of money and greed, and I was going to resist the John-Edwards-like impulses of narcissism. I was going to run a country based on the same principles that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson wrote about in either the Federalist Papers or the Declaration of Independence.

I could have that dream because, I knew, as an American, I lived in a country where power is shared, not consolidated.

I knew that as an American, I was lucky, and good enough to be born in a country that didn't have poverty and disease like they have poverty and disease in Africa. I knew I could get a job, and I'd have an opportunity to live a life that was something close to my dreams, even if I didn't get everything that I wanted.

But with every bad thing coming out of Washington, and every little nasty political attack I hear on the radio or I see on television, and every bit of talk about credit and jobs drying up, I wonder if everything I hoped for was just that: a dream.

I wonder if I'll ever have anything close to not only what I not wanted, but what I expected. I always expected big things for myself, and I believed all the things my guidance counselors and my parents said about me. But when I look at my profession, and I see newspapers vaporizing, I sometimes wonder if it's a dream that's going to waste.

I have to stop myself, and remind myself that America, yes, is a land of dreams. But it's more a land of hope. I'm 42, and I could still live some or all of my dreams. Without hope, however, I never would have survived.

I never would been able to deal with the struggles I had early on, when I worked for The Delaware State News and a ring of reporters who were jealous of my salary conspired to get me fired. I never would have sought help when I needed it, and turned to a food pantry in 1990 because I couldn't afford to buy anything more than a 79-cent taco at Taco Bell for dinner.

I never would have maintained the friendships I've had, because I've always believed in the people I trust. Even when they've driven me crazy, I always knew there was good in them, and even if they did something wrong, their intentions were right.

I never would have been able to run five miles in 33 minutes and 26 seconds, as I did last week, despite being 42 and long past the prime of my athletic life.

I never would have raised the family I've raised, with an utterly tolerant, open-minded and beautiful wife who has been my saving grace. For that, I am not only hopeful. I'm thankful.

I'd like to think that, if this were 1989 again, and I had the opportunity to look into the future, I'd say I had a life worth living. I didn't know this then, but I know it now: I'll always have the strength and desire to live through the struggles, because I've done it before. As long I'm healthy - not just in body, but in spirit - I'll do it again.

Twenty years ago, on the day I graduated from Rutgers University, I started my first job. I piled my clothes in my back seat, rolled down the windows of my Dodge Dart and drove from New Brunswick to South Brunswick, N.J., with the hot sun rays shooting through the front windshield. I had no air conditioner, so I couldn't stop sweating. I had no FM radio so I couldn't really listen to music.

"Don't worry about it," I thought to myself. "It won't always be like this."

But a song kept repeating in my head, and its meaning was magnified with every pang of nausea I felt in my gut as I felt anxious about a career not yet started. I felt anxious about a newspaper industry that was taking it on the chin, just like it's taking it on the chin now.

Twenty years later, the song never really left, and every now and then, I still hear the strings of the acoustic guitar at the song's opening with every bit of bad news not just about the newspaper industry, but also America.

It was that John Mellencamp song, "Pink Houses," and there was a line in there that seemed to say everything about my life then. More importantly, it says something about our lives now.

Well theres a young man in a t-shirt
Listening to a rockin' rollin' station
He's got a greasy hair, greasy smile
He says: Lord, this must be my destination
'Cuz they told me, when I was younger
"Boy, youre gonna be president"
But just like everyting else, those old crazy dreams
Just kinda came and went

"Ain't that America" he says. Ain't that America, for you and me.

I love that song, but not because it's a song of failed dreams. Behind every lament, I believe, is a feeling of hope.

I believe that Mellencamp saw his song as a message. He believed that lives could be turned around, and not left to die. He saw the farms diseappearing in the Midwest during the early 1980s, and he hoped that people would hear his song, and come to their aid. And they did.

Every time I hear a cry of panic about America, I hope it's not political posturing. I hope it's about hope, and bringing attention to the problems that exist in this country, a nation that's established and strong but young enough to evolve and improve.

I think of The Shawshank Redemption, a movie about inmates at a prison who felt institutionalized by their lives. I remember the scene when the character "Red," played by Morgan Freedman, told his friend, Andy, that hope is a dangerous thing. It could drive a man insane, he said.

Andy, played by Tim Robbins, later broke out of jail and essentially cleared his name. He wrote Red a letter, which Red read when he, too, was able to leave the notorious prison.

"Remember Red," he wrote. "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. "