Letter from New York Positanonews
October 19, 2009
It was just about a year ago that I began writing my letters from New York for Positano News , Amalfi and Sorrento online newspaper . Since I’m of an age where I can barely remember what I was thinking last week, let alone last year, I retrieved a couple of the early specimens to see what had changed. As it turns out, not so much. At least not for the average citizen. If you happen to be a hedge fund manager for Goldman Sachs, then everything is different for you. At this time last year, you were threatened with bankruptcy and were camped on the steps of the Capitol, begging bowl in hand. This year, your million dollar bonus has already been guaranteed. For the rest of us, it’s hard to see how a Dow Jones average over 10,000 is going to benefit the still growing portion of the population that can’t get a job.
We had a lot of hope in the Fall of 2008. Obama had just been elected President and Americans, bursting with pride, were anticipating a sea change in the politics-as-usual policies of the previous administration. When a hundred days had gone by and already the opposition, galvanized into a hard-core nucleus of nastiness, attacked the President for not keeping campaign promises, (even though they were virulently opposed to his positions), we laughed ruefully and asked, what did they expect. But truth be told, we expected miracles ourselves. None have been forthcoming, but the hope is still there. That hasn’t changed either.
In fact, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama last week, makes it appear that those hopes have gone global. Archbishop Desmond Tutu who won the award in 1984 said it “speaks to the promise of President Obama’s message of hope.” On the other hand, former Polish President Lech Walesa, who was awarded the Peace Prize in 1983, insisted it was too soon, noting that Obama “has no contribution so far. He is only beginning to act.” At first, it struck me as something akin to awarding the Nobel Prize in Medicine to the top graduate of Harvard Medical School. Surely the potential for greatness is there, and it would not be unreasonable to expect a cure for cancer might come from just such a candidate. Still, wouldn’t it be premature to award the prize until, well…there actually is a cure for cancer? But the Nobel Prize Committee was very clear in its assessment that “only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future.” And come to think of it, maybe the renewal of hope, even in the absence of real progress, is the true miracle.
Emily Dickinson wrote: “Hope is the thing with feathers/ that perches in the soul/ and sings the tune—without the words,/ and never stops at all…” It’s the hope that engenders the belief that fuels the attempt that might – or might not – end in accomplishment. It’s a palpable thing, not just limited to global concerns. Here, in New York, it’s an axiom of baseball fever. When the Yankees are having a bad season, we turn away, expecting nothing and to our disgust, that’s what we get. But when there’s hope, even with a fair share of losses, they can be galvanized into winning a 13-inning, 5-hour championship game in a driving rain, as they did last night. Without the hope, there’s no possibility of success, whether it be winning a baseball game, reaching the summit of Everest, or achieving world peace.
Hope can be as frivolous as a teenage girl waiting futilely by the phone for that boy who won’t call. But it can have serious intent when it’s judiciously exploited in conjunction with action. What distinguishes the Obama brand of hope from, let’s say, my wish to win the lottery, is that the hope itself is enough to exact a change, minimal though it may be. And maybe that’s enough to deserve an award.
Leah Laiman
Articolo Precedente
