Funny word, dope.  When I was a kid, old folks meant glue, like for a model airplane.  Sometimes they meant information, like news.  We all used it to mean someone silly or stupid.  After I was older, it meant drugs you couldn’t get at the drug store.  Later still, it meant great or excellent…almost the opposite of silly or stupid.

Hope is a funny thing, too.  Most folks think of it like it’s all dressed in white…spiritual, even, like it popped straight outta the bible.  Ya gotta have hope!  We tend to forget we can hope for anything.

“I hope the cops ain’t around when I rob this store.”

And if you have hope, what good is it?  It’s gotta be good for somethin: nobody wants to be hopeless!

“I hope I win the lottery.”  (Odds 300 million to one).

If you’re one a those “live in the now” gurus, hope would be the last thing you want, I guess.  Hope is about the future, right?  Not now, not the past.  Even if we say, “I hope they had a good time,” it’s not really about the past.  When Bill and Bob are back from Aruba, and I haven’t seen them yet, I hope—later when I do see them—they’ll tell me they had a good time.  Even when I get someplace and say, “I hope this is the right address,” I’m hoping I find out—moments from now—that it is.

Time is a one-way street, though.  If we don’t drop dead, we end up in our future; now becomes the past in a heartbeat.  The past can haunt us, but it can’t hurt us like the future can: when I waste another ten bucks on the lottery; show up late cause I was at the wrong address; find the cops waiting for me outside the store I robbed.

Sure, “now” is when it all happens; we can’t do a damn thing except now—but humans aren’t programmed all around now.  Civilization exists because humans consider the not-now.  We know it ain’t always sunny; it ain’t always summer.  We save for a rainy day, store up for winter.

It ain’t no goddam picnic juggling three time zones every minute, but that’s how we’re the human beings.  Not that other species don’t do it, but we made it a fine art.  We got electric light and nuclear power and space vehicles.  Some really dope shit.  Because we futurize our payoff.  We delay gratification: we don’t eat the whole harvest; we save some for the uncertain future.

Delayed gratification isn’t NO gratification.  We hope for gratification, later.  Scary thing, bettin on the future, but we’ve learned it’s way better than ignoring what might happen.

But a future with NO gratification?  That’s hopeless. Our juggling act gets thrown off balance with one a the time zones way too heavy.  As an addict-head, my balance is precarious on a good day!

I was in a meeting once, feeling hopeless, and this cat said somethin like, “You can live without food for weeks; you can live without water for days.  You can even live without breathing for several minutes.  But you can’t live one second without hope.”

He didn’t know he said that just for me.  I knew, right then sittin there, that I still had hope.  I still had it cause I was still breathing.  There’s hope for us who don’t drink, but don’t have much spiritual growth goin on.  There’s hope for us still-intoxicated addict-heads.  There’s hope for the dying, and there’s even hope for the dead: that’s why there’s a heaven.  At least, I hope there is.