Hope springs, Sean. I surely can't fault you or anyone for hoping that we're gonna get someone who is for real and is looking out for us to get into one of those positions where they'll actually help us by simply doing the right thing. But my life's experience has shown me that hope can be one of our most flawed, irrational, and dangerous emotions that we have and one we really need to understand so we can effectively deal with it.
Once upon a time I had some serious issues with drugs, alcohol, women and money, and it ended up with my serving a couple of prison sentences until the help I so desperately needed finally presented itself and gave me the opportunity to straighten up my life.
What I came across during my time in prison showed me just how extreme and extremely powerful hope can be.
On more than one occasion, I actually sat down, broke bread and conversed with men who were either never getting out, not getting out for another 30, 40, or even 50 more years, or they were in prison behind one of those travesties of the court systems we hear about far too often where the person is either innocent, or was sent to prison for far too long in relation to their 'crime'. (Like what happened with my good friend Roger Marsh who's serving an 85 year sentence for a first degree assault where nobody died, and the person he shot, he shot in self defense! And the state violated his right in a very big way!
But that's a whole nother book.
What I'm getting at is what I saw. The one thing that kept these men going: The most irrational emotion called HOPE.
In spite of what their fate was telling them on a daily basis, they still had it. In spite of what the paperwork said from the court they went to that put them where they are, they still had hope.
In spite of all the rules, all the walls and all the bars, day in, day out, over and over and over, they still had hope.
And sitting there, watching them laugh, watching them play cards or bones or monopoly or whatever hobby they might have taken up, eeking out some semblance of whatever kind of life they could from inside the walls of a medium security prison in the state of Colorado showed me just how extremely powerful hope is. But at the same time, given the situation and circumstance, just how thoroughly irrational it is.
I mean imagine being there. Watching all of this. Then realizing what it would take to keep a man going in spite of all he has in front of him.
So yeah, hope is a big deal brother, and totally understandable under most circumstances. But under the most extreme of circumstances my brother, it can make us say and do things that we normally wouldn't say or do, and if our message goes out to a lot of people, and if a lot of people are looking to us for guidance, purpose and/or reason and we allow hope to over-ride our sensibilities, we're doing a disservice to everyone involved. Especially ourselves.
So, much love from the Mile High Sean. You are a bad-ass bro. Never doubt that.